I get the best gaming value-for-the-money out of old issues of Dragon magazine. No matter what edition the magazine was currently supporting, there's always at least three ideas worth the price of admission--and in almost every issue the density of ideas-to-dross skews in the right direction. In this series of posts I'm going to pick back issues at random, give them a read-through, and point out the things that (hopefully) illustrate why I think picking up old issues of Dragon for a couple bucks when you see them in the wilds is damned worthwhile.
This issue begins with a somewhat ominous editorial by Erik Mona about Dragon's difficulties in navigating the contemporary marketplace and the toll that has taken on the magazine's visual presentation. The covers of modern Dragon issues are crowed with tabloid-style cover lines and buzzwords because they magazine has to work harder to sell itself in the era of third-party d20 glut, free content available on the internet, and WotC's overly aggressive publishing schedule. The editorial ends with an almost-admonition to ask your local retailer to carry Dragon; the magazine would cease print publication the following year.
But on to the content.
"Excursion: Four Ways to Travel the World," written by Martin Ralya and illustrated by Jeff Carlisle, is one of those articles that gives you a full package of things you can use in your home games. (Wait a minute, Martin Ralya? I know that guy from online! Excellent.) The article details four conveyances, their crews, and their captains: a three-masted sloop, a submersible, a caravan, and an airship. The included schematics for the conveyances are super helpful (and easily re-purposed), and the included adventure seeds could be used as handily for a random encounter while en route or a full session of play.
It wouldn't feel like an issue of Dragon without a few new monsters being added to the mix. It's always seemed strange to me that D&D has a million kinds of dragons, but has traditionally done very little with sea serpents. "Sea Serpents: Dragons of the Briny Depths," written by Morgan and Tracey Peer and illustrated by Atilla Adorjany, aims to cross the streams by offering four draconic beasts of the deep sea. "Underdark Animals," written by Ryan Nock and illustrated by Tom Fowler, offers four mounts and beasts of burden that might be used by the drow of the Underdark. I dig the wild "hollow earth" vibe of these creatures; we've got a giant snake, an eight-foot tall velociraptor, an ebony lizard, and massive albino apes.
Although not particularly useful for any edition of D&D, it is interested that the "Equipment Array" article by Christopher Wissel, illustrated again by Tom Fowler, offers pre-priced packs of adventuring gear--a concept that would become heavily emphasized in 5e's core character creation rules.
I get the best gaming value-for-the-money out of old issues of Dragon magazine. No matter what edition the magazine was currently supporting, there's always at least three ideas worth the price of admission--and in almost every issue the density of ideas-to-dross skews in the right direction. In this series of posts I'm going to pick back issues at random, give them a read-through, and point out the things that (hopefully) illustrate why I think picking up old issues of Dragon for a couple bucks when you see them in the wilds is damned worthwhile.
"In a Class By Themselves," written by Tom Doolan and illustrated by Rags Morales, is not the sort of article that usually appeals to me. Essentially, the article takes up the system for creating a new character class in the 2e AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide, and gives a few examples of how to use it to create hybrid classes that act as a kind of multi-classing for human characters. However, the second example--the street avenger--did catch my eye: "Here is the peasant’s paladin, the back-alley hero. The street avenger has made it his personal quest to rid his city of violent crime. He uses the criminals’ own methods to root them out and destroy them, yet he remains the hero and savior of the helpless victim." Although the concept of the street avenger isn't the most original character concept ever, it occurs me that I've never played a character fitting that profile, and that the core idea of a street avenger would fit very well into the Umberwell. In the spirit of making something new from something old, I've borrowing Doolan's character class idea and made a 5e D&D character in that mold: Elzabeth o' the Gutter.
Peter Adkison's "The PC Report Card" is halfway toward something I can use. The notion of grading the players' performance to assign XP seems weirdly one-sided in a game that is essentially a collaborative effort to have fun, and since I grade people's work in real life this isn't something I want to do when I'm off the clock. However, the idea of having players write down the things they feel they accomplished or were significant on a 3x5 card after a game session and using that information to award XP or other rewards is interesting and worth tinkering with.
"Magical Crossbreeds," written by Johnathan M. Richards and illustrated by George Vrbanic, takes a tried-and-true D&Dism out for a walk: wizards are always using magic to glue two different creatures together into a monstrous amalgamation, ala the owlbear. The article gives a full Monstrous Manual treatment to six new monsters, including the amadillephant, dragonfly turtle, duckbunny, moat cat, spider-horse, and venom dog. Although these beasties might be a little out there for most D&D campaigns, I can certainly see them getting some use in a Gamma World game or perhaps a homebrew D&D setting based on Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation.
