Over the years, I've posted a bunch of my rejected "Ecology" articles each as standalone Story Hour threads, with the thought that these were after all "D&D stories" if not traditional write-ups of D&D game sessions. Some of them have become rather difficult to find, as many were originally posted quite a few years back. So I thought I'd start up this thread as a central repository.
For those not in the know, back in the print days of the magazine, Dragon's "Ecology" articles started out as short stories generally involving a group of D&D player characters encountering a specific monster and put game details about how to run the monster in a series of footnotes. Eventually, after many years of doing it that way a new magazine editor decided to scrap the "fiction and footnote" format and make the articles just straight DM information, doing away with the fiction part entirely. I had been the most frequent contributor to the series and in fact had six "Ecology" articles submitted that would have gotten published had the editorial reins not been passed to someone else with different views on the subject.
In any case, here are the ones I've posted thus far:
Monster Hunters
The Monster Hunters Association was a group of wizards and sages who gathered together to hunt various monsters for the specific purpose of making magic items out of their body parts.
Shandrilla and Javorik
A female human rogue, her male gnome illusionist companion, and his gnome fighter cousin spent more time exploring underground passageways than the rogue was entirely comfortable with.
Standalones (AD&D 2nd Edition)
Standalones (D&D 3.0)
I've been thinking of possibly adding to the list above, both by unearthing some of my older rejected works from the AD&D days and actually writing new ones, now that my D&D campaigns are on hiatus due to COVID-19 and I need some way to get my D&D fix. In fact, I had two specific "oddball" monsters I thought would make particularly appropriate additions to the Monster Hunters list....
Johnathan
For those not in the know, back in the print days of the magazine, Dragon's "Ecology" articles started out as short stories generally involving a group of D&D player characters encountering a specific monster and put game details about how to run the monster in a series of footnotes. Eventually, after many years of doing it that way a new magazine editor decided to scrap the "fiction and footnote" format and make the articles just straight DM information, doing away with the fiction part entirely. I had been the most frequent contributor to the series and in fact had six "Ecology" articles submitted that would have gotten published had the editorial reins not been passed to someone else with different views on the subject.
In any case, here are the ones I've posted thus far:
Monster Hunters
The Monster Hunters Association was a group of wizards and sages who gathered together to hunt various monsters for the specific purpose of making magic items out of their body parts.
Shandrilla and Javorik
A female human rogue, her male gnome illusionist companion, and his gnome fighter cousin spent more time exploring underground passageways than the rogue was entirely comfortable with.
Standalones (AD&D 2nd Edition)
Standalones (D&D 3.0)
I've been thinking of possibly adding to the list above, both by unearthing some of my older rejected works from the AD&D days and actually writing new ones, now that my D&D campaigns are on hiatus due to COVID-19 and I need some way to get my D&D fix. In fact, I had two specific "oddball" monsters I thought would make particularly appropriate additions to the Monster Hunters list....
Johnathan
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