Just got the CD with issues 1-250; What is best, IYNSHO?

[Particle_Man]

I see a wealth of articles but don't know where to begin.

What are the issues/articles/etc. from the first 250 issues of Dragon Magazine (and the 7 "The Strategic Review" issues) would you recommend as the best to look at?

I am in a 3rd ed. game now (and love it, by the way), but have hopes of running a Castles and Crusades game in the future.

 

[Mark Hope]

Well, if I don't mention them, someone else will. The Politics of Hell article and the one on gates (From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass, or something like that) are two real classics. The Seven Sentence NPC is another great article, as is the piece on Tucker's Kobolds. To be honest, there are so many great articles in those issues that it's hard to pin down all the good ones. In addition to those classics, I recall getting a lot of use out of the Samurai and Anti-Paladin classes (supposedly for NPCs, but we used them as PC classes, of course), the articles on Tesseracts (reprinted in the Dragon Compendium, iirc), an article called An Army Travels on its Stomach that had some cool ideas, and some very early articles on designing dungeons (can't recall their names, but they might even have been in the SR rather than the Dragon).

 

[Greg K]

Some of my favorites include:
"Non violent Magic Items" I can't recall the author but I think it was issue 73
Katherine Kerr's "The Real Barbarian"
Katherine Kerr's "Beyond the Dungeon"
Ed Greenwood's "Nine Hells" two parts and the follow-up "Nine Hells Revisited"
David Howery's revision of the 1e Barbarian
David Howery's revision of the 1e Cavalier
David Howery's "Comple Complete Fighter"

 

[Emirikol]

Some of my favorites:

Mercenaries
Cardboard boat (in fact, I'm printing this one today). I need a couple boats.
Any article that I helped with
HERO POINTS (the precursor to Action points..only better)
Look at some of the early adventures (map sheet with rooms, monsters and treasure)
Gods of Greyhawk (pictures)
Fiction (I always meant to go back and read these to my kids)

jh

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Does it contain the minigames like Flight of the Boodles? Those were always fun. And the comic strips Fineous Fingers, Wormy, and Phil & Dixie were as good as anything put out today.

 

[Gentlegamer]

"Day of the Dwarf" by Roger Moore

Fineous Fingers series

The saga of Waldorf (letters section)

 

[airwalkrr]

I like Gary Gygax's "From the Sorcerer's Scroll" articles detailing events in Greyhawk, but that's just me.

 

[Psion]

My Dragon Bookmarks aren't on this PC, but a few favorites are:

• 101 Little Mysteries (#240) - It was a rockin' selection of intriguing elements you could drop in as plot hooks, clues, etc. It rocked so much, I wrote some of my own (see here and here.)
• If you are into planar jaunts, the god corpse article in the same issue is great.
• Also Known as... the Orc (#158) - Alternate cultural names for common D&D creatures. Since I don't exactly believe in inventing a new cosmology for each culture... it makes more sense to me to make most D&D entities be essentially
• The creature catalogs. It chapped my hide that the third one got left out of the dragon CD archive... I had to go dig up my hardcopy.
• The enchanted armors article illustrated by rk post, that had things like bug armor and force armor. I need to update that to 3e.
• The article on new ioun stones in 179. It also talked about the original ioun stones as conceived by Vance, and made a sort of parallel where you could harvest them on a part of the plane of minerals that borders on the positive energy plane.
• Bonds of Brotherhood (#164) - A great article if you are struggling to find a place for monks in your game. Discussing creating goals for the monastic brotherhood.

 

[Greg K]

[*]Bonds of Brotherhood (#164) - A great article if you are struggling to find a place for monks in your game. Discussing creating goals for the monastic brotherhood.

I remember that there was a "Role of Books" in which the columnist presented a novel that demonstrated how the monk could be introduced into a DND setting with a little alteration to the flavor. I wish that I could remember the title of the book. I guess that I need to reinstall my Dragon Magazine archives and search for it

 

[Maester Luwin]

Hey everyone! Alot of really great articles have already listed. Some of my favorites are:
Poison's of Cerilion;
Glyph's of Cerilion;
The Demihuman articles by Roger More;
Crictal Hits & Crictal Misses;
The Boinger & Zareth fiction/ stories;
All the Monster Ecology articles by Ed Greenwood;

There are many more but these stand out to me! Thanks Maester Luwin