How have you used Dragon Magazine content?

[Ralif Redhammer]

If I use something from Dragon I try to make sure that I only need to reference it for a single adventure or two. Otherwise, it becomes a pain having to constantly dig around for the exact article.

As far as specific things I've used, it's mostly been monsters, spells, and items (magic and mundane), especially for when I wanted to surprise my PCs.

Years ago, there was an issue that had dagger variations. One of which was called the cinqueada (a wide triangular blade), which did 1d6 points of damage. And became just about every wizard's favorite.

 

[Enkhidu]

Lots of stuff - we used it for Bounty Hunters in the 1e days, I recently updated one of the 1e mods to 3.5ishE, and it was the basis for our crit charts for years.

Believe it or not, we actually use it less now.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I carried the Dragon Unleashed issue around for about 2 months because the chocobo stats came up just about every game. Then the PCs reached a level where their chocobos died in one hit from any serious enemy...

Other than that, it's mostly been inspirational.

 

[The_Gneech]

Hmm ... Monte Cook's "Mystic" prestige class from early on in the 3.0 era, a lot of the Drow backstory stuff from early last year (IIRC), a few random magic items, and I'm digging some of the Kenku stuff from the last issue.

Way back in 1984-1985, I used the bard class variant ("A Different Bard, Not Quite So Hard") and I've gotten a lot of use out of the "Gods of the Demi-Humans" stuff from an old "Best of Dragon" anthology.

On the whole, tho, not that much compared to the volume of issues I own or have read. Way less than I get out of any given issue of Dungeon, anyway.

-The Gneech

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I drop in the spells and magic items pretty liberally.

 

[Prince Atom]

I use the Leveled Weapons article out of the Oriental Adventures issue (long time ago). I tried using the martial arts move generator from that same issue, but the players all laughed

Any column of "Dungeoncraft" is extremely useful to me.

I recently equipped some goblins with polearms from a recent issue, and took a suggestion about using hand bells as alarms (which caught my players by surprise).

I don't really pay much attention to the miniatures columns or Silicon Sorcery, though.

TWK
Whiner of Legacy

 

[KB9JMQ]

I use it more for ideas rather than take something straight out of it and drop it in game.

 

[Andre]

Given that I GM for my group only about 1/3 of the time, and we game twice a month, using Dragon material isn't easy. Since 3E came out, I've used a couple monsters, included a couple spells as treasure (which the party never used), and maybe an item or two.

NONE of the mechanical stuff has been used by my players, even when I've pushed it pretty hard (levelling items, trading xp for racial abilities). They're happy using the core books plus some splat material.

 

[sniffles]

I use the Leveled Weapons article out of the Oriental Adventures issue (long time ago). I tried using the martial arts move generator from that same issue, but the players all laughed

TWK
Whiner of Legacy

Gee, that was only like 3 - 4 years ago!! Not that long! (make me feel old!)

We've used spells, feats, and prestige classes. I'm still bummed that one rogue/sorcerer PC I was running never got to go into the Eldritch Master prestige class, from one of the first issues after 3E was released (campaign died). My current bard PC is going to be going into the Worldspeaker class eventually (can't remember what issue that's from).

I check out the Realmshelp website often because it has updated lists of all these items from Dragon (and I can get to the site from work, while the WotC site is blocked).