Well, lets do give propers here.
There aren't any alternatives. That is not a criticism. It is the simple fact that for 20 years now, there has been Dragon magazine, and then there has been a bunch of fanzines.
Dragon has been a dependable, tremendous resource, produced on a professional basis month after month for years and has often been on the very cutting edge of gaming thought. It has been at times, thought provoking, useful, funny, scholarly, and artistic and it continues to be so today. Dragon has featured in its covers some of the finest fantasy art of its day, and has featured in its pages fine fantasy stories. I thought that the Richard Garfield essays on game design were some of the most brilliant writing I have seen done on the subject.
The GRR Martin scoop was tremendous.
Which is not to say that I don't think there is tremendous room for improvement or that the magazine has plateaued in quality.
I know that there are issues of cost, but in a perfect world, this is what I want more of:
1) Cover art showcasing the finest talent in the business. Dragon should be _the_ place for a fantasy artist to have his works reach a wider audience. Heck, I wouldn't mind if from time to time you did whole pictorials on the recent works of some artist of note + interview. DM's need that sort of creative inspiration as much as they need crunchy rules bits.
2) Inside stories feature the best speculative writers in the business. There are several outlets for a Sci-Fi writers short stories, but fantasy writers are largely confined to novels unless they happen to also write sci-fi and can bundle fantasy short stories in a collection. The sci-fi short story is highly respected in the community (even if it doesn't make money like a novel) - the fantasy short story ought to be able to occupy the same place. Dragon should be THE leading place to offer fantasy short stories to a wide audience, and should be a credible place for presenting a sci-fi short story. Surely its distribution doesn't lag much behind Analog - and in fact I would think the opposite. The day should come when Dragon is respectable enough that author's are willing to publish works worthy of a Nebula there.
3) Dragon has always been a educational resource for me. DM's find themselves needing to know EVERYTHING at one point or another. The magazine should feature at least one semi-scholary article per issue featuring an in depth review of some historical or mythilogical topic (however esoteric) likely to be of interest to world builders or recreationists and as seen with an eye toward gaming. This could be anything for a discusion of linguistics for DM's wanting to invent languages, to a discussion of city militia's during the Italian Reinassaince, to a discussion of Irish Folk myth and how grounding your campaign in such myth might change the nature of certain 'monsters'.
For example, I remember one particularly interesting article on Sea Serpants that stands out in my mind to this day of what a Dragon article should be like. More recent articles on historical cities viewed from a fantasy prespective have also been very interesting (though I would have liked a bit more depth).
4) One really crunchy article by a rules smith with obvious talent and experience explaining how to do something really complex. Granted, this is no longer as necessary as it once was, given that there are all these third party publishers out there reaching virtually every niche, but it is still nice if you just want a short article and don't want to shell out $20. Alot of topics that are being published in PDF's would be really nice to see in short forms in Dragon.
I think of the recent article on PC's engaging in business as fine example of this sort of article.
5) One crunchy light article featuring new magic items, spells, new feats, new PrC's, new core classes, new monsters, or new templates.
And, no more than one per issue. There are only so many of these that are useful at a time, and it is a real turn off for me if the entire article is this sort of rules bloat.
I for one think Nodwick rocks. Maybe the best series full page color cartoons Dragon has ever had. That isn't to say that a rotation might not be in order in the future, but the comics are certainly no the problem with the current magazine.
