Quote from: (un)reason;299286The Dragon Issue 26: June 1979

You missed one of the highlights of the issue: the color ad for Divine Right inside the back cover!

I loved that game.

Quote from: (un)reasonGiants in the earth: Another article that is intended as a recurring one, this is where they stat out characters from various books for D&D.

I really like this series, not so much for the characters themselves (which I don't remember actually using at all) but because of the exposure to the different fantasy authors.

Quote from: (un)reasonAnd what of the skinnies? An add-on to the Starship troopers wargame, giving the humanoids a power boost so they can match up to the humans and bugs, instead of being stuck in the middle getting slaughtered. Not sure how well this holds up mechanically, but it seems a decent enough article. Hopefully it was of use to someone.

It was to me.

Quote from: (un)reasonChinese Undead: I think you know what to expect from this. Has a bit of crossover with the vampires around the world article from last issue, but not enough to be useless. And as ever real world mythology is easily as strange and considerably less optimised towards ass-kicking abilities than D&D monsters.

I remember using the vampire-spectre in a game, and I recall at least one character being turned into a weretiger as a result.

What I love most are the stat blocks: one line each. Those were the days . . .

There's also a fun cartoon on the same page: "Close ranks, men, and brace yourselves for wandering monsters. I hear the sound of six-sided dice rolling!"

Quote from: (un)reasonA load of general stuff for boot hill. This is stuff that'll mostly benefit players, at the cost of adding extra mechanical gewgaws to remember. All in all, this is pretty meh.

The "running a horse to death" rule proved very helpful in a situation where the player-character posse was chasing a pair of NPC bandits in one of my games.

Quote from: (un)reasonMugger! A somewhat humourous D&D mod, in which the players play muggers trying to rob as much stuff as possible while avoiding the arm of the law.  Fun as a one-shot, and as it's encounters are by random table, it looks like it would work well as a solitaire game. Which is neat. Bring on the violence.

Played this numerous times, using the city board from Squad Leader as our urban jungle.

Quote from: (un)reasonBlueprint for a lich: Another familiar idea gets its first expression. Becoming a lich takes quite a bit of work, and this article lays out the steps. It has a few bits that later versions would omit (maybe they'd developed more refined transformation rituals) but is still the basic form that would hold throughout 1st and 2nd edition, and be adapted to create dracoliches. Which is nice, I guess.

This article, and others like it, went a long way toward helping me figure just what a wizard was likely to have on the shelves and in the tuns and urns of her laboratory.

Dragon #19
"Planning Creative Treasures" by Dave Schroeder

QuoteOne of my favorite treasure-making plans is to roll up a moderate to
high level character, give him or her a few personal quirks, and go from
there. One high-level magic-user was so paranoid that his best magical
item was a necklace of gems of detection — detect Magic, Evil, Good,
Weres, Gold, Secret Doors, Invisible, you name it. A bishop with a
fondness for little boys had dozens of bottles of "Youth Potion". The
possibilities are endless. Enjoy creating creative treasures!

I wasn't there for that campaign, but I imagine Schroeder's creativity went like this:

"So you see that the Archbishop you just killed was raping little boys.  Not teenagers, not seventeen-year-olds who called themselves 'boys,' but *little* boys.

They were powerless to grow up in order to resist, because he kept dosing them with youth potions.  And those potions last for years, so he was raping them, over and over, for years.  And the Archbishop wouldn't get impotent from old age, because he could use the youth potions on himself, too."

I don't think Schroeder was trying to make a statement that rape is trivial.  I think the whole idea of rape just wasn't very real to him.  It was all a game of endless possibilities and endless creativity.  Maybe Schroeder was used to saying a lot of things at the game table, where there was no tape recorder running, and he decided to see how far he could push it by making the same rape jokes in print.

The problem I have with a lot of original D&D is that most of the designers seem to have felt no responsibility whatsoever.  They didn't seem to really think anything through, or think about any kind of connections their ideas might have with other ideas.  Their endless possibilities don't seem to have been much constrained by demands for consistency.

Quote from: riprock;299306The tactics are somewhat interesting, especially the ones I hadn't heard before.

What I find *very* interesting about that article is that it shows how original D&D rules seem to have accumulated like English common law, with hundreds of small disputes and contradictory judgements eventually adding up to a precedent.  Jim Ward was offering things that his DMs had let him get away with.  This added up to a truly useful body of precedents.  Of course, any DM could say that those precedents are not binding precedents in his campaign, but the power of the centralized media meant that hundreds of DMs in those information-starved 1970s were forming opinions based on what Jim Ward had written.

And when we take into account that Jim is the guy personally responsible for the term Monty haul campaigns, I think it's safe to say we can probably get away with more than we could if he or someone like him hadn't been part of the original crew.

Quote from: The Shaman;299312You missed one of the highlights of the issue: the color ad for Divine Right inside the back cover!

Don't worry, divine right gets plenty of love over the next couple of years.

QuoteWhat I love most are the stat blocks: one line each. Those were the days . . .

Now that's a statement I can agree with.

Quote from: riprock;299315The problem I have with a lot of original D&D is that most of the designers seem to have felt no responsibility whatsoever.  They didn't seem to really think anything through, or think about any kind of connections their ideas might have with other ideas.  Their endless possibilities don't seem to have been much constrained by demands for consistency.

Yup. It is a source of irritation. Of course, it is rather harder to check all the existing stuff and see if someone has already done anything like what you're trying when you don't have internet fora, searchable .pdf's, etc.

Quote from: (un)reason;299287And yet, a few years later he created UA. (albeit, as a response to financial mismanagement while he was off in hollywood) The temptation for short term profit over long term stability is a dangerous thing, that affects our entire economy. Not an easy problem to solve.

Yes, he realized the danger and yet he fell for it, in part because of financial emergency, but also because the uber-nerds were screaming out for it.  

RPGPundit

The Dragon Issue 27: July 1979

52 pages. So its their third birthday, and they are now firmly established as the premier magazine in their field. A pretty good place to be in. So they're looking back a bit. And the thing they're most proud of, oddly enough is the snits games. Life is full of amusing oddities. But that doesn't mean they've taken their eye off the ball. They intend to advance with the times, instituting a computer game column, and more increases in size.  Which is nice, I guess. More work for me. We also get a new logo, losing the ooziness of the old one for a more easily legible angular script. All things must change, I suppose.

In this issue:

Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited. (unless you're the kind of person who enjoys playing something like chess as a hobby in itself, rather than boardgames as a whole) I guess that was their analog of indie games like my life with master. Digression aside, it's a very well written review, that comprehensively covers both its good and bad points, and examines the historical accuracy of the game. Guess it was up to the editor to show up all those freelancers submitting shoddy reviews.

Agincourt designers notes: I guess this is this issues big topic then. The designer talks about his design choices, and fills in more details about the historical context of Agincourt. Not quite as interesting as the review, this is still a solid article, which combined with the previous should give you more than enough information on if you want to buy the game.

The effects of agincourt on the hundred years war: A third article, this time focusing on the political situation surrounding the battle, what happened before and afterwards. A tale of madness, famine, bankruptcy, treachery and technology. If anyone says history is boring, they've had the wrong teacher.

Elementals and the philosophers stone:  An interesting article, drawing upon greek theories of matter to create an alternate cosmology based upon a cubic structure, with the 4 elements and good and evil arranged in a cube, with 12 other physical and emotional states being formed by the combinations between them. An idea that would of course later be paralleled in the demi and quasielemental planes, with the overt morality stripped out. I quite like this, and like the alternate alignment systems presented in earlier issues, would very much like to try it out in game sometime. After all, anything, even a cosmology as cool as the great wheel, gets dull eventually with overuse.

What judges guild has done for D&D: By publishing officially licenced products for D&D, both it, we, and you have benefited. In addition, we have encouraged the practice of GM's treating players fairly, not as antagonists to be tricked and slaughtered at every opportunity, and playing by the rules, as this messes up the game balance. We also encourage realistic world building. Ooookay. Permit me to have a degree of skepicism. Not sure how to feel about this article.

Cangames '79: Gary reviews the convention, giving it good marks, and saying he hopes to visit again next year. Not much more to say on this one.

Out on a limb: A veeeeeeeeery long letter rebutting the scathing attack on bakshi's LotR. A quite short letter attacking the mountain of supplements for D&D, and the expense of keeping up with the game. (excuse me while I snigger for a moment) Nothing to see here folks, move along, move along.

Tesseracts - A traveller artifact: The idea presented for D&D a few issues back gets adapted to traveler, with similarly fun results. Hyperdimensional stuff is always so much fun.

A new comic, The voyages of exploration ship znutar: Another silly little B&W number that looks like it's leading into something.

Star system generation for Traveller: You know the drill by now, random tables, usefull stuff for when the GM is short of ideas. I ought to make a random table of comments to make for when an article is too dull to form a strong opinion on it. It'd certainly get a lot of use over the course of this.

Design notes for Divine Right:

A quick look at dwarves: Thoughts on the organisations of dwarven armies. My god, it actually has some D&D stuff in. There's been surprisingly little of that this issue. An ok article, with lots of ideas that make sense, but nothing truly ground-breaking.

The emerald tablet design notes: I think you know what to expect here. They talk about the mechanical problems they faced in designing a game that covered a wide variety of fantasy mileus, and the solutions they came up with, plus the inspirations behind the game, such as Kaballa (before sephiroth was appropriated by angsty fangirls) and goetic magic. A rather long-winded article, that nonetheless carries some interesting information. (not least that the preferred spellings of the translations of these terms have changed in recent years) Another amusing historical footnote.

An advert for Best of The Dragon. Only 4 years in and they're already releasing their first retrospective. Not a very good showing. Even most boybands take 5 (but then, I'm of the opinion that band shouldn't release a greatest hits until they've been around at least a decade, and had enough hits that some of them can be considered greatest and the rest left out. ) I thoroughly disapprove of this development.

Giants in the earth: Durathror, Fafhrd and the grey mouser, and john carter of mars. Like last issue, all are ridiculously twinked to a degree that few players will be able to match, and none by purely random generation. Where are our everyman heroes who win by luck and courage, not disgusting amounts of power?

Review: The english civil war. Price complaints due to the weakness of the dollar to the pound. My, have times changed A pretty well balanced review, covering both the good and bad sides of the game.

Expanding Imperium: Several interesting optional rules drawing on various sci-fi shows. Another one that I can't comment on, but the article seems pretty well written, so they'd probably be fun to try.

Review: MiG Killers. Another air fighting game. Now there's a genre that's pretty much disappeared these days, due to computer games doing it better, more easily, providing a visceral experience. Oh well. Another pretty positive review.

The mythos of africa for G: DG&H: And I thought this barrel was empty already. Guess I forgot about these guys. (and it's normally Australia that winds up being the last one picked for the team) Rather a mash-up, given the size and diversity of Africa. No great surprises here to anyone with any mythological studies experience.

Dragons bestiary: The Horast. I don't remember this one. Which is a shame, as it's not a bad monster.

Fineous fingers continues.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: The bag of wind. An item that I remember. A good set of synergistic themed abilities, plus a bit of classic mythological reference. Quite a nice article, overall.

Possibly the most D&D light issue I've yet read. Which does present a few problems, when so much of the content is wargames that I don't know. I guess I should appreciate it now, because I've got many years ahead where it'll be nothing but D&D all the way through. Too much, too little, both can be annoying. What are you gonna do?

Quote from: RPGPundit;299379Yes, he realized the danger and yet he fell for it, in part because of financial emergency, but also because the uber-nerds were screaming out for it.  

RPGPundit

From the moment she walked into the office, I knew that dame was gonna be trouble. Gotta little job for you, she said, revealing all the latest equippment, and new splats that just wouldn't quit. Now me, I'm just a poor little corebook. Times had been tough recently, what with all the other games competing for people's attention, but I was scraping by. Next thing you know she's got me working day and night. And sure, it seemed good at first. Money was rolling in, and I got to really expand the business. But it got to the point that I was so busy trying new things, I barely got to see the inside of a dungeon anymore. Or something. I'm pretty sure someone has already done this particular comedic riff before and better.

Quote from: (un)reason;299483Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited.

Refer to many Forger or other small games. They take what is essentially a single adventure scenario and try to make a whole game out of it; extending the rules for that one game into other scenarios gives less than brilliant results.

Wargames, rpgs, the same trends pop up - arguing over "realism" and quibbling over details which have no effect on the end result, vanity press microgames, a trend towards glossy colour and endless minutae of rules to keep the cashflow up, and so on.

QuoteI really appreciate all the historical articles - I still do, actually. Lots of good ideas for both real-world and fantasy or sci-fi gaming.

Curious how the D&D hobby diverged enough from the historical wargaming hobby that Dragon stopped publishing historical hobbies altogether. My recollection is that happened around '81-'82, when D&D began to really take off.

I know I grew up in the transition period when historical and sci-fi fell by the wayside and fantasy came to be the overwhelming gaming genre. Guys older than me tend to be into historical wargaming. Everyone younger will hardly touch a game unless it has a fantasy theme.

I wonder why, sociologically, fantasy became the overwhelming escapist/gaming genre? When I was a teenager, Dune and Lord of the Rings were neck and neck in popularity. It's hard to imagine a genuinely sci-fi book rivalling LotR in today's pop culture.

Quote from: (un)reason;299483Agincourt - the destruction of french chivalry: A review of the wargame by Tim the editor. This brings up an interesting topic. It seems like wargames designed to represent one particular battle in history and nothing else were quite common back then. Which seems quite strange, from my perspective, as you'd have to learn new rules for each game, and the replay value would be somewhat limited.

The board wargame hobby really took off with games depicting single battles or campaigns: Gettysburg, Battle of the Bulge, Afrika Korps, etc.  This trend continues to this day.  It's nothing at all like "Forger crap" or anything that parallels the RPG hobby.

Most board wargame designs, especially back then, shared many of the same rules, with a few special cases to capture the "flavor" of the specific battle/campaign being depicted.  So you could (and still can, though the variety in rules systems is much greater these days) move from one game to another with little trouble.

As for replay value, there's a reason that the same few battles (Bulge, Gettysburg, Waterloo) are depicted over and over: they're very wide-open situations in terms of what each side can do, and allow for a multitude of different tactics, starting from set-up and on.  Throw in randomization in the form of a d6-based CRT, and you've got a game that never plays the same way twice.  I've played dozens of games of Russian Campaign to completion, and will probably play many dozens more before I'm dead and gone, and I'll bet every play will be a completely new experience.

The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979

56 pages, plus an extra 3 of boardgame. (ha, I knew it. When I saw the comic last issue, I though that this was leading into another cool little game included with the magazine. ) The editor talks about the geeky stigma of wargaming, and encourages people not to act ashamed of what they do, but explain it sensibly to their friends and family. And don't get confused between reality and fantasy. Oh, if only more people had listened.

In this issue:

The politics of hell: How Asmodeus got to be the 3rd supreme leader of hell, after satan and beelzebub got overthrown. Decidedly non-canonical, and also very based upon earthly history and judeo-christian mythology. Still a high quality and entertaining article, that would make a good alternative to the standard D&D backstory. Interesting to note that the 4th ed devil origin story bears more resembalance to this than the last one. Could this have been an influence on Mearls and co?

At last, the DMG is finished! So we get an interview with gary on it, plus commentary from the rest of the TSR staff. It is intended to be the definitive tome on everything the GM needs to run the game, a huge leap up from OD&D in comprehensiveness, so houseruling is no longer neccecary or desirable to run the game. This is the culimination of years of hard work and the game is now complete. And dwarven women have beards with a vote of 12 to 1. Yeah, this is an epic article full of great quotes, many of which are rather amusing in light of what's happened since. Yeah, the hubris has set in a bit. When you think your work needs no further improvement, thats when stagnation starts. And if you stagnate, you set yourself up for a fall, when things change around you and you fail to adapt. But I'll stop moralising now. Honestly, at this rate, I'll turn into as big a windbag as Gary.

A short course in D&D: An entire school gets taught how to play the game in short order. Very interesting, as it shows both the lack of social stigma the game had at the time, and the logistical problems that large groups with lots of new people and turnover present. Has plenty of tips that are still relevant today.

The cavalry plain at austerlitz: A system free historical article. One of those ones that tries to condense a topic that could cover an entire book into a couple of pages, and fails to be interesting in doing so.

Simulating the cavalry plain: The crunchy partner to the previous article.

Evil - Law vs Chaos: Which basically, in Gary's mind boils down to Domination of everything vs smashing shit for kicks. Hey, another thing that 4th ed has boiled things back down to again. Now that is interesting to note. One of those articles that will be polarising, because it oversimplifies the myriad of facets that can contribute to a persons position in the alignment field.

Six guns & Sorcery: Official crossover rules for boot hill and AD&D. Niiiiice. Given the recent talk of how D&D politics is modelled on the old west ideals, this seems curiously appropriate. Ahh, the joy of gonzo crossovers. And as we know, there would be several more of these. And what's wrong with that? A well chosen crosover can really inject excitement. Its only when you try and throw everything into the pot at once that it just gets confusing and tedious.

Fantasysmiths notebook: Choosing miniatures to represent characters and monsters in your game. Solid advice like focus on getting ones for players and common monsters, otherwise you'll skew the campaign by wanting to show off your dragon miniature too often. Ends with a list of recommended companies. A pretty solid article, as long as you're not the kind of person who rejects the idea of using miniatures in your RPGing. And if you are, clear off and play with the LARPers. We don't want your kind around here

Armies of the rennaisance part 4 - the english. Longbows kick your ass, bitch! And then firearms kick your ass again a few centuries later. Phear our naval supremacy.  Another rather too condensed article for the amount of ground it tries to cover.

Elvish tactics in fantasy miniatures: Following on from the dwarven tactics last issue (but will we see halfling battle tactics anytime soon? ) Longbows (kick your ass again) light horses, light armour, harrying tactics, generally being complete bastards. Nothing you wouldn't expect. Ahh, stereotypes.

Conventions - The manufacturers view: Gary talks about the logistical problems involved in attending conventions, and how it really doesn't generate them as much profit as you'd think. Really. they're mostly doing it because they love what they do, and attending is good for the industry as much as it is for them personally. If they were in it for the money, they'd be doing something else. Which all seems pretty reasonable.

Out on a limb: A letter bitching at them for not offering reprints. (frankly my dear, it's just not profitable)  A letter giving big chunks of errata for Cross of Iron. Talk of mutant animals in MA. And an epic rant from marc jacobs covering a whole bunch of percieved flaws in the system. That hit points inflate but healing is linear, and how annoying and unrealistic this is. Stupid results created by random generation, forgetting spells, ripping off ideas from other systems. Oh, and the use of goblinoids as a racial metaphor. Yeah, sounds like you shouldn't be playing D&D at all, if you have this many problems with the system and premise. But then they had far fewer systems to choose from back then. The rebuttal to this goes all over the shop, forward to page 46, then back to 11. It's all a bit silly really.

The voyages of the ship znutar continue

And yeah, here's the rules for the acompanying game. More amusing Tom Wham art abounds. This game is somewhat bigger than the snits one, as obviously they've had more practice in the last couple of years, and their design skills have grown accordingly. Looks like it should be fun.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Lots of stuff I remember, including that lovely joke item the apparatus of spiky owns. Most notable, though for introducing Leomund to us. One of the iconic old wizards who would put their names to a whole bunch of spells and magic items does so here.

Level progression for players and DM's: Oh dear. This is one of those articles that would come back to bite them in the ass later. Each game you play in and things you do in them give you a certain amount of XP. You can then use this to determine your real world level as a player and DM. It's all presented pretty seriously, enough so that even I'm not sure if the original writer intended it as a joke. Which is a bit worrying. If this had made it into the DMG, how many people would have wound up ranking themselves officially. Ahh, hindsight. How very tiresome you are.

Giants in the earth: More overpowered statting outs of literary characters, in this case Eric John Stark, and the ghost of Welleran. I'm really not liking this section at all, and hope it doesn't stay as a regular article for long.

Monty strikes back: More epicness featuring the original obscenely overpowered D&D group getting challenges commensurate with their power (which of course includes plenty of the artifacts that would later become D&D legends. ) And when they beat even that, Monty throws a snit and kills them all by plant rape. Uh huh huh huh huh.

Reviews: Divine right, America BC, Sorcerer (they oughta sue Ron Edwards) All are primarily desriptive reviews, with little personal judgement in them. Which makes them a little dull. You have enough adverts. You need to make your reviews more opinionated, otherwise what's the point.

An advert for a game set in the Dune universe. Iiinteresting

Dragon's Bestiary - the Slinger. Little lizards that use the manticore trick of throwing their poisonous spines at people. Another monster that never made it to the official bestiaries, despite being one of the more realistic and ecologically integrated monsters they've come up with. Oh well, Can't win 'em all.

Fineous fingers continues.

Another high quality issue, with lots of cool articles, but curiously enough also many indicators of the things that would later contribute to D&D's stigmatism and decline. Again, hindsight reveals plenty of ways that things could have been changed if they'd been done differently, but fails to be particularly helpfull in dealing with our present problems. Still at least 4e is adapting, not stagnating. If the changes they're making work in the long run or not remains to be seen, but at least they're not pretending that their new edition is the perfect version of D&D, never to be changed or bettered again.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;299489Wargames, rpgs, the same trends pop up

This is about Kriegsspiel, which the Prussian army used to train officers in the 1800s:

"Eventually so many rules sprang up, as each regiment improvised their own variations, two versions came into use. One, known as 'rigid Kriegspiel', was played by strict adherence to the lengthy rule book. The other, 'free Kriegspiel', was governed by the decisions of human umpires. Each version had its advantages and disadvantages: rigid Kriegspiel contained rules covering most situations, and the rules were derived from historical battles where those same situations had occurred, making the simulation verifiable and rooted in observable data, which some later American models discarded. However, its prescriptive nature acted against any impulse of the participants towards free and creative thinking. Conversely, free Kriegspiel could encourage this type of thinking, as its rules were open to interpretation by umpires and could be adapted during operation. This very interpretation, though, tended to negate the verifiable nature of the simulation, as different umpires might well adjudge the same situation in different ways, especially where there was a lack of historical precedent. In addition, it allowed umpires to weight the outcome, consciously or otherwise."

(Wikipedia)

Quote from: Haffrung;299493I wonder why, sociologically, fantasy became the overwhelming escapist/gaming genre? When I was a teenager, Dune and Lord of the Rings were neck and neck in popularity. It's hard to imagine a genuinely sci-fi book rivalling LotR in today's pop culture.

This question is worthy of its own set of threads.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14074

One big trend was a growing set of feminist book-buyers.  Both males and females were buying escapist fiction with very powerful heroines.  The cultural trend toward feminism may have rejected sci-fi as too male-dominated, despite great names like C.L.Moore, Andre Norton and Leigh Brackett.  

So in the 1950s there were cookie-cutter heroes with rayguns, and in the 1960s there were cookie-cutter heroes with swords, and by the time the 1970s rolled around, the time was ripe for a number of prominent women writers who wrote great stories, with and without fantasy, with and without female leads.  

To drop just a few good names:
C.J.Cherryh
Tanith Lee

(Rest assured I have a much longer list of female fiction authors whom I despise, cough cough, Marion Zimmer Bradley, cough cough, and a vast list of authoresses who leave me mostly, if not entirely cold, cough cough Ursula K. LeGuin.)

However, Sturgeon's Law ensured that there were vast amounts of derivative pablum.  As the 1970s moved onward, the ripoffs went from a muscular man with a sword to a lingerie model in a chainmail bikini with a sword.

And then the breakthrough came when the lingerie model swordswoman was replaced by a New Age woman with long hair and a giant quartz crystal.  Anne McCaffrey's 1982 opus, _Crystalsinger_, is typical of this period.

http://www.geocities.com/asfrlist/books/crystalsinger.jpg

The linked cover art is not typical.  Most of them had loose-robed, dreamy eyed girls posing against beautiful landscapes.

This really needs to be a better organized essay on trends in late twentieth century pop fiction. (And such a thread belongs on the pop culture board, "Inspiration"...) If I promise to participate in such a thread, will the rest of you fill in the gaps in my knowledge?

Quote from: (un)reason;299616The Dragon Issue 28: August 1979

Monty strikes back: More epicness featuring the original obscenely overpowered D&D group getting challenges commensurate with their power (which of course includes plenty of the artifacts that would later become D&D legends. ) And when they beat even that, Monty throws a snit and kills them all by plant rape. Uh huh huh huh huh.

Hmm...

The text mentions "wolfoids."

Does Jerry Holkins have these on CD?  He probably does ... but did he intentionally copy this in his recent strips, or is it just a term so generic that it keeps getting re-used?

Also, this came out in August, 1979 and "The Empire Strikes Back" wasn't out until 1980 ... did the title get leaked?

Quote from: (un)reason;299483The Dragon Issue 27: July 1979


The emerald tablet design notes: I think you know what to expect here. They talk about the mechanical problems they faced in designing a game that covered a wide variety of fantasy mileus, and the solutions they came up with, plus the inspirations behind the game, such as Kaballa (before sephiroth was appropriated by angsty fangirls) and goetic magic. A rather long-winded article, that nonetheless carries some interesting information. (not least that the preferred spellings of the translations of these terms have changed in recent years) Another amusing historical footnote.

I found it more painful than amusing.  It combines in-game creations, general New Age philosophy, and medieval details.

I don't think they *read* the sources they cite, they just fed them into a paper shredder, mixed the strips and paper, and copied words at random from the waste bin.

QuoteThe High
Magic Circle should have a small Triangle of the Art to the east to serve
as an astral locus but we did not have room to include it.

...

For a month before making any of these symbols, the magic user must
refrain from any sex and he must fast, maintaining a ritual purity. The
Seals may only be made when the Moon is rising in Virgo and only on a
Saturday or Tuesday night. Certain incenses — alum, cedar wood,
aloes and resinous gum — correspond to the suitable time and are to be
burned while creating these symbols. The Pentagram is usually worn
during an evocation on one side of the front of the magic user's robe.
...
Bibliography
David Conway. Magic, an Occult Primer. E.P. Dutton: New York,
1973. This is a "how-to" book written by a practicing adept.
Conway is very serious, eminently sensible (if you grant him his
premise that magic is "real") and a good writer.
Selections from European grimoires, with introductions.
Citadel: Secaucus, NJ, 1961. Selections from European
grimoires, with introductions. Waite is a bit opaque in his writing.
historical account of magic and the occult. Wilson is as con-
cerned, however, with such things as spiritualism as magic. He
presents a fascinating theory to "explain" magic and occult
phenomena in general.
Idries Shah. The Secret Lore of Magic. Citadel: Secaucus, NJ, 1958.
Arthur E. Waite. The Book of Ceremonial Magic, a Complete Grimoire.
Colin Wilson. The Occult. Random House: New York, 1971. The best

The triangle is essential, so they omitted it.

The astrological timing andthe incenses must be done specifically -- so they just mentioned in the most general way possible.

The sexual abstinence is the only sexual angle they could find, so they threw it into the mix....

Why bother opening the source material if you're not going to *read* it?

Quote from: riprock;299639I found it more painful than amusing.  It combines in-game creations, general New Age philosophy, and medieval details.

I don't think they *read* the sources they cite, they just fed them into a paper shredder, mixed the strips and paper, and copied words at random from the waste bin.

The triangle is essential, so they omitted it.

The astrological timing andthe incenses must be done specifically -- so they just mentioned in the most general way possible.

The sexual abstinence is the only sexual angle they could find, so they threw it into the mix....

Why bother opening the source material if you're not going to *read* it?

Ahh, the David Bowie method of research and emulation. I must confess to having used it myself in the past. Of course, I'm generally trying to avoid imitating the original sources too closely.