DMH said:
Ecology of the Dungeon, 211- best article ever. Helps bring life to not only dungeons, but much more.
Survival is a Group Effort, 89- a look at humanoid reproductive rates. Useful in long term campaign planning and war type campaigns.
Make Monsters, not Monstrosities, 59- excellent look at monster creation. Almost all of it is still useable today.
Revenge of the Nobodies, 112, Magic Mangling Made Easy, 173, Defeating More with Less, 174- all 3 on how to use "weak" creatures and people to great effect against much more powerful PCs. As is Tucker's Kobolds in 127.
In a Cavern, In a Canyon..., 152- everything you want to know about mining in D&D.
Curses are Divine, 167- curses bestowed by priests.
"Just Give me Money", 167- ways of altering money and using the silver standard. Has many examples from RL cultures and fictional ones.
The End of the World, 138- how to use plagues. Mostly based on the Black Plague, but has so much useful infomation that can be used for others.
Thats my top 10. I would add Magic That Doesn't go Boom, but it is too short and isn't special anymore.
Ourph said:
In no particular order....
"Living in a Material World" by Michael Dobson
"An Army Travels on its Stomach" by Katherine Kerr
"The Care of Castles" by Katherine Kerr
"Knowing What's in Store" by Dave Rosene
"Tables and Tables of Troops" by James Yates
"That's Life in the Big City" by Kevin Anderson and Kristine Thompson
"Wounds and Weeds" by Kevin Anderson
"Deserted Cities of Mars" by Jim Ward
"Halflings, Dwarves, Clerics and Thieves in Dungeon! by Gary Gygax
"The Bandit" by Tom Armstrong and Roger E. Moore
"The Deathmaster" by Len Lakofka
"The Duelist" by Arthur Collins
"Be Aware, Take Care" by Lew Pulsipher
"The Seven-Sentence NPC"--i forget the issue.
"The Sunset World" #150
Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft run
Role-Playing Reviews, any of them by Rick Swan or Ken Cliffe, and particularly the round-up/comparison ones (such as psionics supplements for 3-4 systems, all in one review).
Tucker's Kobolds editorial
The 3-4 articles on African setting: classes/races, weapons, gods, monsters, IIRC.
Ecology of the Gibbering Mouther
Ecology of the Otyugh
"Bugged About Something?"--really brings out how much fun giant insects can be
"Get Your Priorities Straight"--a way to provide some structure and definition to AD&D alignments so that they make some sense in a real-world context, but still fulfill the game role of absolute moral categories.
Those are just the ones that jump immediately to mind, without digging, or jchecking any of of my lists.
Erik Mona said:
If people are willing to further indulge an enterprising Dragon editor-in-chief, I'd be interested in hearing about favorite articles since the advent of third edition. By no means change your "historical" list, but I am very interested if anything has stood out from the magazine's modern era.
Not to rain on your parade, but I don't think it's coincidence that, prior to your prompting, almost all the recollections were of older articles--many of them late '80s/early '90s. More importantly, i don't think it's coincidence that a large portion--perhaps the majority--of articless cited here are ones that are either rules-free, or have nothing particularly to do with any specific rules system. And i don't think it's just because people have switched systems, and so the system-specific articles are less useful. I think it's that i'm not the only one that finds the most use out of precisely those sorts of articles that provide material that the rulebooks don't, rather than just more variations on the sorts of stuff the rulebooks already provide (i.e., feats, spells, monsters, classes, and other new widgets). While a new class may get a ton of use in the short run--the incantatrix, witch, duelist, and scout, sure saw a lot of use in my games, back in the day--in the long run, you outgrow them. I'm never gonna outgrow an article like Winninger's Dungeoncraft. I may have already learned everything he has to say, or may remember everything he wrote so i don't have to go back to the actual article, but the content is precisely the sort of tthing that transcends campaigns, game systems, and maybe even playstyles.
