Dungeon Mag vs. Dragon Magazine

[Steel_Wind]

Both magazines are worth getting. As between the two, I would choose Dungeon - but that choice is becoming more difficult with the renovations to Dragon over the past 18 months.

Dragon is in a renaissance and is now in a bona fide "Silver Age" of quality.

Dungeon has never been better, is in its "Golden Age" and does, indeed, represent the best value in RPG gaming; so much so, it's not even close.

 

[Nightfall]

Steel,

Agreed. We have our Dragon Silver age now and Dungeon Golden Age. I hope it never ends!

 

[morbiczer]

Only get Dungeon if you are interested in pre-written adventures. Every Dungeon has a few other articles, but it is hardly worth buying it only for those if you don't want to use the adventures. Every Dungeon has a low-level, a mid-level and a high-level adventure (something like 1-6, 7-13, 14-20). One of the adventures is part of the Adventure Path, but even those should be able to be played on their own.

Dragon has basicaly all sorts of D&D related things. Current fan favourites are the "Core beliefs" articles (article with detailed information about a PHB deity and its church) and the Demonomicon of Iggliwy (article about a Demon prince). Each of them comes every four months I think. The Ecology series is also very good, these give information about one monster, mainly fluff, background infos. Every Dragon has a theme, most articles in the issue wil relate to it. The comics in Dragon are also very good. There is is really not much bad that could be said about Dragon nowadays.

 

[Nightfall]

Morb,

Don't forget the Class Acts. There's some (like Dragon 349) that are very, very useful to particular set of classes.

 

[00Machado]

I tend to like to Game Master. I find Dungeon to be a superb buy for that. Adventures: 1 low level, 1 medium level, and 1 high level per issue. Dungeon craft to help hone your GM skills. Tidbits useful for spicing up encounters. NPCs to use, maps to use even if you don't run the adventure, and a map per issue (roughly) that is not tied to an adventure, and exists for you to build your own encounters around.

If I were buying one, as a GM, I'd buy Dungeon.

Dragon is the better buy if you want something geared toward players, something that has equal balance of use for you as a player and GM (no adventures her, just rule options, and others articles that you might want to use, etc).

For my play style, options tend to complicate play. I prefer the adventures and GM workbook section in Dungeon. But YMMV.

 

[Shemeska]

Subscribe to both magazines. They both happen to be in a Golden Age right now!

I'll second this. Both magazines have been remarkably well put together of late, and the increase in quality has made me subscribe to Dungeon as well as Dragon, while for a number of years I'd only been subscibed to Dragon. It's well worth the price.

 

[Kyuss Knight]

I just renewed my subscriptions to both. I have used a few of the adventures from Dungeon and some of the options from Dragon, but mostly I just really enjoy flipping through a magazine related to my hobby.

 

[JustKim]

I play and DM, and I prefer Dragon. I've been a Dragon subscriber for a long time. I also read Dungeon a few times a year, but I don't find it all that useful a DM tool. Part of it is probably that I get encounter ideas all the time and Dungeon's adventures just end up another idea (albeit more detailed) on the backburner. Part of it is that Dungeon is stingy with noncore material, and variety- especially in spellcasters- suffers because of it. Finally, part of it is that an adventure takes much more time to digest than an article on alchemy in D&D. I don't have to look very hard at a Dragon article to tell whether or not I can use it. On the other hand, I can pore over an adventure for hours and finally decide to use it, only to encounter major problems in play.

Also, I hate Downer.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Dragon is much more of a toolkit than Dungeon. Dungeon has a few things other than adventures and NPCs to fight, but not much and it's not as useful, IME.

 

[Nightfall]

Whiz,

Dunno. They have the occasional magic item/artifact that useful to the PC.