Editing Dragon Magazine (section)

==Content==
To call Dragon's content "eclectic" is hardly doing it justice. Dragon has '''everything''' D&D related; new classes (base and prestige), races, monsters and many other subjects that could be used to enhance a Dungeons & Dragons game. A popular long-running column Sage Advice offered official answers to Dungeons & Dragons questions submitted by players. Other articles provided tips and suggestions for both players and Dungeon Masters (DMs). It sometimes discussed meta-gaming issues, such as getting along with fellow players. It also included a number of different gaming-related comic strips - TSR produced issues contained [[Knights of the Dinner Table]], Finieous Fingers, What's New with Phil & Dixie, [[Wormy]], Yamara and SnarfQuest, whilst WoTC produced issues containing Zogonia, strips of The Order of the Stick towards its final days, and continued the presentation of [[Nodwick]] and Dork Tower.

Dragon was the launching point for any number of rules, spells, monsters, magic items, and other ideas that were incorporated into later official products of the Dungeons & Dragons game. Perhaps ''the'' biggest example of this was the actual [[Forgotten Realms]] campaign setting; although this giant amongst D&D worlds launched as an official product in 1987, it got its start as a series of world-lore articles that [[Ed Greenwood]] began submitting from the early 1980s.

Many article series came and went. For example, "Giants in the Earth" was a TSR-exclusive article series that converted real-world or fantasy novel/game characters to AD&D statblocks. During WotC's direct production of the magazines, they would include "Rogues Gallery", a 3e equivalent to "Giants in the Earth".

All iterations of Dragon up until Dragon+ featured the "Ecology of..." series, articles that examined the biology and psychology of different monsters - TSR's versions were usually handled as fiction pieces involving adventurers encountering the focus monster, with biology reduced to footnotes at the bottom of each page. From 1996, they changed the format so that each "Ecology" article focused on the misadventures of the [[Monster Hunters Association]], a band of arrogant [[wizard]]s who would hunt different monsters to exploit their usefulness in concocting various magical items - this iteration would include more "organic" discussion of the monster's lore, as the MHA members would discuss the target of their hunt, but still rely on footnotes for added details. The MHA's members were statted in the Rogues Gallery article for Dragon #282. Paizo changed the format to a more dry, professional "hunter's guidebook approach" when they took over Dragon, and this is the format that WotC would retain for the magazine's 4e days.

Many of the gaming world's most famous writers, game designers and artists have published work in the magazine. Through most of its run the magazine frequently published fantasy fiction, either short stories or novel excerpts. After the 1990s, the appearance of fiction stories became relatively rare. One late example was issue #305's featured excerpt from George R.R. Martin's later Hugo-nominated novel A Feast for Crows. It also featured book reviews of fantasy and science fiction novels, and occasionally of films of particular interest (such as the TV movie of Mazes and Monsters).

In the early 1980s, almost every issue of Dragon would contain a role playing adventure, a simple board game, or some kind of special game supplement (such as a cardboard cut-out castle). For instance, Tom Wham's Snit's Revenge, The Awful Green Things From Outer Space and File 13 all started as supplements within The Dragon. These bonus features become infrequent after the 1986 launch of Dungeon magazine, which published several new Dungeons & Dragons adventures in each issue.

During the 1980s, after TSR had purchased Simulations Publications Inc., the magazine had a subsection called Ares Magazine, based on SPI's magazine of that name, specializing in science fiction and superhero role playing games, with pages marked by a gray border. The content included write-ups for various characters of the Marvel Universe for TSR's Marvel Super-Heroes.

In fact, the amount of pre-4e Dragon content is so huge that there's actually a website that tries to serve as an encyclopedic reference for the whole mess, which you can find here: http://www.aeolia.net/dragondex/

Sadly, no equivalent for the 4e Dragon content exists (yet).