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

Wow, that Gary interview is great material, especially in light of the rants on this site.

What Gary is effectively saying is that D&D is too accessible and is appealling to all the wrong people.  In his elitism, he wants to cater to a "higher" breed of gamer.  He flatly admits the original D&D game is a redheaded stepchild played by undesirables. Mainstream gaming is AD&D and elitism.

The whole Player/DM level thing is more of the elitism of the era, just more funny this time.  Check out the greater experience playing or running AD&D gives you (and the DMG either isn't even out yet or is barely in anyone's hands).  Notice how "Basic" D&D is explicitly marked as inferior to "Original" D&D.  Also, the awards depend much more on what game you play rather than advancement/how well you play.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299677Wow, that Gary interview is great material, especially in light of the rants on this site.

What Gary is effectively saying is that D&D is too accessible and is appealling to all the wrong people.  In his elitism, he wants to cater to a "higher" breed of gamer.  He flatly admits the original D&D game is a redheaded stepchild played by undesirables. Mainstream gaming is AD&D and elitism.

I think part of it is that his awkward wargaming friends are starting to get noticed by more respectable people.  He was expecting the game to be played by college students, Vietnam veterans, and other adults.  Suddenly he's getting bad publicity and parents are asking him why their ten-year-old sons are asking about decapitation... and that's just part of it.  Gary wasn't crazy about 3 a.m. phone calls from total strangers, but it got worse.

The more important part is that his Vietnam veteran friends are saying, "Hey, Gary,  I went to New York City and they were playing as lizardmen cleric-magic-users.  We killed Odin on the third round."  *That* kind of thing seemed to drive him nuts.

QuoteI looked at
D&D and said, "This is a game form designed for a
much different audience than is actually playing
D&D." So what we want to do is to provide a
quarter-million, or a half-million, or whatever the
number of players and referees is, with a game
form that is really usable to them. D&D is only a
loose structure and doesn't answer many of the
needs of the DM.

With D&D, the DM can find that unless he or she
had been extremely careful, one winds up with a
campaign that lasts six weeks, or maybe even six
months, but then everybody is beyond the para-
meters of the rules. With AD&D, growth is slower,
it's more structured, and it's designed so that you
won't run out of game in six weeks, or six months.
---
Q.:One of the raps against D&D was that it was too
flexible, and one of the great difficulties, particular-
ly in going to conventions or tournaments and
such, was: anyone could say, "I'm having a D&D
game, and a person from one side of the country
would go, he'd sit down at the table, and within ten
minutes, he knew he was in trouble, because he
didn't recognize it as any kind of D&D he had ever
played. How flexible, or how inflexible, is AD&D in
this regard, compared to D&D? Can a player from
California go and find a group in New York and at
least have some reasonable assurance that he or
she is at least going to understand the guidelines
and the framework?  
...

I think his "paternal" pride was threatened when he saw the massive Monty Haul-ism.  On a more practical note, as D&D got more chaotic, he might have been worried about copyright law.  Perhaps he feared a lawyer would say that because D&D was so adaptable, TSR no longer had the rights to it, because they couldn't defend the copyright.

The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979

56 pages. This issue marks the arrival of Kim Mohan, who's role is listed simply as staff. Keep an eye on the boy, because he's going to go a long way soon. There's also plenty of other less significant new staff. Their influence will be felt soon. Interesting times indeed.

In this issue:

Of the Gods: Thoughts on creating your own pantheon for your games. As is common in this era it includes random tables for generating your own deities when inspiration runs dry, plus a sample pantheon. A well thought out and written article that nevertheless feels a bit tacky and mechanical. If you can't come up with a decent set of gods without recourse to tables, what hope for the rest of your setting?

Source of the nile flow charts: A play aid that pretty much tells me how to play the game. Which obviously means it's a good one that does its job well. I quite approve of this.

A ounce of preparation is worth a ton of paint: Lotsa tips on how to properly set up and paint miniatures so they'll make good gaming tools. Another article that is well enough explained to be useful to a complete beginner. Is this the start of a new degree of accessabilty in the magazine?

Half ogres as an official D&D race, by Gary himself. They have very restricted options, being pretty much forced into THOG SMASH! by their ability range. He also talks about the idea of allowing other various halfbreeds, and the problems that this would cause to game balance. Another bit of evidence why 3rd edition was not to his taste, the proliferation of racial templates is precisely the opposite of what he espouses here. You know, if you bow to pressure and allow this, then people are going to just keep on pushing. You've got to be firmer with all those twinks and monsterphiles. Human supremacy 4eva!

Curses: An article on the proper use of these lovely little implements of magical vengance, as well as their removal. Be ironic, tailor them to the curser and the crime, and let people pervert the letter of them to get around them or profit from them. Yeah, I like this kind of thinking. It brings an element of mythology into the game that may require some thought to handle, but makes the game deeper than just another hack and slash dungeon.

Out on a limb: Lots of varied commentary on the last few issues. Quite a bit of it concerns Gary's recent controversial statements. The column is finally picking up, thanks to the increased readership and threats of being shut down. Pretty soon they'll be able to pick and choose which letters to include and which to ignore.

Giants in the earth: This month the characters given disgustingly twinked stats are Roger Zelazny's Shadowjack, and Jack Vance's Iucounu. You know my opinion of this by now, so I shall refrain from further grumbling on this topic unless things change in some way.

Rewarding heroism in D&D: Our first attempt at proper narrative reinforcement, a set of optional rules giving the characters benefits for behaving in a properly heroic manner. Which is nice, and another article that is historically significant for introducing that kind of thinking to the game. Shame it would take so long to become common though.

Inns and Taverns: A little article on the setup of historical inns and taverns. Neither brilliant or particularly bad, this is just one of those articles that helps fill space in an expanding magazine like this.

Air war - North vietnam: A load of new scenarios for the game based upon that common thread. A short but sweet article that looks like it does what it says on the tin.

Smaller than man sized weapons: Another little article that does what it says it does. The setup they use here is somewhat more complex than the 3rd ed version, with individual alterations for every weapon for two different smaller sizes. Oh, for standardisation.

The sleep war: An SCA actual play, this shows that politics there can be easily as ludicrous as in real life. Much fun in cold and muddy fields was had.

Origins of the Norse pantheon: Not quite what the label indicates. There is much talk on Berserking, and a little on the origins and geographic ranges of the original Aesir and Vanir religions. One of those articles that feels woefully short for the depth of its topic.

The mythos of Oceania: Yet more G,DG&H stats. We get the usual mix of concept embodiers, wierd critters, great heroes and their relations. Are there any more pantheons I've forgotten about, because damned if I can think of any they haven't covered yet.

Strain and spellcasting: A spell point system that substantially depowers magic-users. Well, plenty of people were sending them in, so I suppose they had to publish one. So by choosing one that weakens them, the people at TSR make it unlikely anyone will actually use it. Thus keeping vancian magic supreme. How clever of them. :rolleyes:

Trained animals: What, they didn't include rules for something as important as this in the DMG anyway? Shocking. So much for it being complete.

Aging in D&D: Take my previous statement and make it double. Oh yeah, they did, just simpler ones. This version uses a random roll per 2 years to determine if you lose points in your physical stats. Which of course is dreadfully unpredictable. Which is probably more realistic, but less fair and fun for the game than the 3rd ed way of doing things.

Nonplayer characters have feelings too: Need random personality traits for your NPC's and hirelings. Roll here. I ought to make an index of all these random tables, so people can use them more efficiently later.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Two classic items this time. The ring of the necromancer (using the term in the proper sense, rather than just as the title for an 8th level magic user.) And the binary stop design for determining the results of Hewards mystical organ. Very pleasing indeed. Can I have some more please sir.

Jim Ward reports on Origins 1979. Despite some organisational hassles, and a lack of air conditioning, it was in general a success. So they'll be going again next year then.

The reviews section gets a proper title this issue, The Dragons Augury. Wonder how long that'll stick? Anyway, this issue they review Reich, a wargame. Raiders and traders, another war/strategy game Panzer colors II, a book. I, Kubelwagon, a book. Desert tracks, a book. The tolkien quiz book, pretty self explanatory, plus a whole host of mini-reviews I can't be bothered to list individually. The profesionality has definitely taken a step up here. Which is nice.

Fineous fingers goes on vacation again. But wormy is Baaack, if only with a recap of the story so far.

Dragons Bestiary: the whiz-bang beetle. An amusing little low level monster that takes the prospensity of real insects to fly into flames and glass, and extrapolates it to a creature that has the power to punch through walls by flying into them repeatedly. Which should be fun for adventurers to face. Shame this one never made it into common use.

Another sign of their increasing professionalism, Dragon finally gets a proper classified ads section. Another thing that I wonder whether it will take off or not, given the trouble they had with the letters page.

Another significant issue with several innovations that would make it into future products (but plenty more that wouldn't) this marks the start of another leap in professionalism. Looks like 1979 was a real turning point in D&D's fortunes in many ways. And we've still got 3 months to go. What further surprises could they spring on us before the year is out? Lets keep going and see.

Quote from: (un)reason;299711The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979

Strain and spellcasting: A spell point system that substantially depowers magic-users. Well, plenty of people were sending them in, so I suppose they had to publish one. So by choosing one that weakens them, the people at TSR make it unlikely anyone will actually use it. Thus keeping vancian magic supreme. How clever of them. :rolleyes:

They must have had a *lot* of people who believed that mages were stronger than clerics.

When I was playing and running a lot of AD&D in the 1980s, our consensus was that magic-users were weak since they usually died long before they got powerful, and that clerics would be the strongest class if it were possible to really test them all.  Of course lack of long-running campaigns made it difficult to test such claims.

Quote from: (un)reason;299711The Dragon Issue 29: September 1979

Thumbing through with ya...

This Divine Right advertisement catches my attention.  Checking out brief descriptions of it on Boardgame Geek makes me think it would have been a good fit for my gaming group in the late 80s.  A shame I never heard about it until now.  (I've had the Dragon Anthology CDs for a good while now, but I seldom look back before issue 70 or 80 because all that is before my time.)

The Sorcerors Scroll has the wonderful quote of: "but any player selecting a non-human character does not have any real advantage."  That's probably true from the perspective of the canon AD&D level limits and long term campaign play.  The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB.  I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule.  Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap.  Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play.  The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem."  They only came out in very extended campaigns.  For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.

Moving on to the Out on a Limb section, the AD&D vs T&T letter caught my eye.  Apparrently I missed yet another one of those instances where Gary Gygax bashed another game.  I guess I need to go back and check issue 25.

There's another letter in the Out on a Limb section which I found interesting, but purely for the heading the editor decided to assign.  A RPGer is seeking advice on how to find other RPGers to play with.  The advice he receives is completely separated from the modern mantra of "visit the LGS."  But then there's the heading.  It says, "Finding Opponents."  At this time, at least to the editor, finding new RPG players was the same as "Finding Opponents."  I find that a fascinating observation into the world of pre-80s gaming.

The Smaller Than Man Sized Weapons Table article is another interesting one for a reason completely outside the scope of the article.  As the article describes, the inspiration for these lower damages was a player who wanted to play a Hobbit who was not a thief or assassin.  This was against the GM's sensibilities, as all Hobbits MUST be one of those two classes.  So he started nerfing the weapons.

Ah, classic gaming.  Play to type or get the fuck out!  

I can't resist it.  I have to say it.  This 30 year old Dragon Magazine is very similar in format to a modern Palladium book.  The main difference is that Dragon occasionally ventured into the realm of 3 columns, and had nicely formatted tables.  Dragon 30 years ago had a better layout than a post-2000 Palladium book.

The Reviews section continues to remind me that this magazine was from 2-3 years before I knew anything about gaming.  The only names I recognize in that section are Starfire, Star Fleet Battles, and Circus Maximus.  And I have a feeling the Circus Maximus described has no relation to the late 80s game I'm familiar with.

It's kind of funny.  Star Fleet Battles was already being called complicated and the Commanders Edition is still several years away.  Since this is 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture should be hitting theaters soon.  I guess that will give SFB a little boost.

MY GOD!  That has to be the densest Wormy I've ever seen.  Did Chris Claremont write it?

All in all, this Dragon is one which I wouldn't have found much use for.  Not a very good issue at all.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299746The Sorcerors Scroll has the wonderful quote of: "but any player selecting a non-human character does not have any real advantage."  That's probably true from the perspective of the canon AD&D level limits and long term campaign play.  The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB. I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule.  Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap.  Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play.  The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem."  They only came out in very extended campaigns.  For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.

Gygax was doing something that had never really been done before, so he had no realistic way to estimate what would be dropped and what would be obeyed.

Considering the wide extent of disobedience, though, it looks like his hope of standardizing by means of AD&D was misguided.  Of course, that's because the tabletop requires so much active cooperation from customers.  

If WotC could actually sell a functioning electronic gametable, it might require a lot more effort to houserule, and that could standardize the game.

Alternately, they could just teach people how to recognize and enumerate houserules.  That would be better IMHO.

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

I love the armor on the cover.

Quote from: (un)reasonTesseracts - 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.

My favoritist Traveller artifact evah. This is one of the holy grail items in my TU.

Quote from: (un)reasonStar 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.

Given that we're still a few years away from the release of Scouts and Grand Census/Grand Survey, stuff like this came in very handy at the time.

Remember the context in which these articles are released.

Quote from: (un)reasonDesign notes for Divine Right:

"Oh boy, isn't this great!?!"

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

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.

I'm actually enjoying re-reading these.

Quote from: (un)reasonGiants 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.

I take back what I said last time: I did use the ghost of Welleran in a game, or at least his similarly powered cousin.

These characters inspired me to consider dual-classing my human characters.

The Dragon Issue 30: October 1979

48 pages. Geeks, cults, and disappearances, oh my! So this is when the first D&D player takes things too far headline hit the news, and the tabloids start printing ridiculous misconceptions about the nature of the game. Well, its another thing I was curious about. Remember everyone, It's your job to present yourself to the world as well adjusted people, so these unfortunates do not tarnish the name of the hobby as a whole. Of course, any publicity is good publicity in a way, and we know that sales would still increase considerably after this point, so this is not the BADDness you're looking for.

In this issue:

Kim Mohan gives us his first article, which is also a report of the first ever convention he attended. Talk about jumping in at the deep end. He gets star struck  meeting the other D&D writers, worn out dealing with the endless public demand, amazed how nice virtually everyone is, and takes lots of photos. His huge amount of enthusiasm for his new job shows through, and is pretty infectious. This is why you need new people every so often. All the skill in the world means nothing without the energy to back it up.

Where the Orcs are: An epic miniatures castle and its inhabitants gets a several page, full color spread of photos showing it off. Truly, an awe inspiring example of the ridiculous lengths people are willing to go for their hobbies. Mind you, given the amount of time and effort I'm putting into this thread, maybe its not such an unachievable standard after all.

Leomund's tiny hut: Another new regular column starts. This particular one goes into extensive detail on the powers and limitations of vampires, extrapolating on their MM entry, and delivering rules expansions and errata. There is a certain amount of nerfing going on here, as Len tends to rule in a conservative way, but even so, vampires are still disgustingly powerfull and able to screw your characters for ages with a single hit. And if they were played intelligently, they would be able to take over the world with worrying ease. Ahh, spawning monsters. How you mess with the idea of a workable ecology.

Another persons perspective on this years Origins. Lots of cool specifics and a well written article.

White plume mountain! Another classic module out now. Isn't this the one with the crashed spacecraft? Or was that expedition to the barrier peaks? Ahh, silly crossovers. You don't get anything like that in modern adventures.

New settings for the adventure. Gary talks on stuff in general. First, he talks about the difference between a publisher and an editor, and how much input he has on the contents of the magazine. Notable here is that he says he is trying to keep the amount of articles he submits each month to a reasonable amount, so as not to overdominate the magazine. When I consider how slow his C&C output was in the last few years of his life, this just makes me sad. When you consider the risks and costs in transhumanism, and then compare them to what age does to people, frankly I think I'm willing to face those drawbacks. But anyway. He also criticises the Giants in the earth column for overpowering the characters, and talks about the new modules out soon. All in all, a very informative column this issue.

The new improved Ninja!: As if they weren't twinked enough, this article gives ninjas a whole slew of new weapons and powers. Not very well integrated with the D&D ruleset, nor particularly imaginative, this is just not very good in general. This is why we needed feats. It stopped characters from being able to pick up every special power given to their class in various supplements.

The formative years of Fafhrd and the Mouser: The guy who introduced Harry and Fritz to one-another, and is thus indirectly responsible for lankhmar, talks about their high school and university years, how they influenced one-another, and their collective creation. Another extremely informative article about the roots of the hobby.

Boot hill, What scale?: Ahh, miniatures, and the hassle of using them when there isn't a standardised ratio. Lots of talk on the various companies producing miniatures at the time, and their respective merits. One of those articles I can't really form an opinion on.

Designers notes for Flattop: Another case of the compromises that have to be made in game design, and the neccesity for playtesting. Which is what every good designer should go through. Hopefully it produced a good game, but I can't tell just from this article.

Standardisation vs playability: Thoughts on variation in populations of various creatures, creating a realistic world that has powerful monsters, yet humans are still supreme as a race, language barriers, the amount of the world you actually flesh out and allow the PC's to explore. Lots of tricky thoughts for the GM to chew over, and even if the answers aren't brilliant, at least it gets you working on the right questions.

Armies of the rennaisance part 5 - Eastern europe: Nick Nascati continues his whizz speed synopses of battle strategies. Cossacks, ponies, muskets, treachery and a good bibliography at the end, oh my.

Tournament success in six steps: You wanna kick ass at conventions? Lots of good advice here. A short sweet article.

Out on a limb: This month, we get a letter asking the people at TSR to co-ordinate all the people playing high level druids, so they can be challenged, and there only be the right number in the campaign and real world
Someone attacking Gygax's statement that he intends to focus on AD&D, taking that as an insult to D&D and everyone who still plays it.
Another attack on bakshi's LotR.
A basic question on the function of a magical item.
Ohh, oh, this one's important! A suggestion that to reduce things getting lost, D&D create loose leaf supplements that can then be rearranged and put into a ring binder. Which of course they would take up in the moldvay basic set and lots of the monstrous compendia. Stuart Malone, nice idea, but not functional in practice. Still, have a shout out for introducing them to the concept and influencing future product.
A straightforward letter praising them, and asking for more fiction.
A letter attacking jim ward for inconsistency in his descriptions of a gamma world group, which he defends by saying not all members of a group are identical, which makes sense.
A correction of a review.
Another load of general questions.
And someone asking why they changed the logo on the front cover. (the answer is to make it more legible at a distance.) Definitely the busiest issue yet on this front.

Giants in the earth: This issue, we have Piers Anthony's Sol of all weapons, Tanith Lee's Zorayas and Clark Ashton Smith's Maal Dweb. The twinkedness continues, despite the complaints.

Reviews: Spellmaker, A boardgame. Black hole, another boardgame. Down styphon, a wargame. The quality of reviews from last issue is maintained.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: The extraneous inventions of Orlow the indolent. I remember the stuff in here from the old 4 volume magic item compendium they released near the end of 2nd ed. Lots of highly amusing stuff in here. I wonder if we'll see Orlow again? I don't remember any of his spells making it into the main books, which is a shame.

Wormy returns in a rather tangental fashion, introducing an entirely new set of characters. What's all that about then? Fineous fingers also returns.

Dragons bestiary: Curst. Say hello to the very first contribution by Ed Greenwood. You'll have to get used to him, because he ain't going away any time soon. These are the ultimate angstbunnies, humans cursed so they can never die, and spend eternity in a halflife state, becoming more and more insane. Seems cliche now, but compared to the way they've been handling vampires, these guys are full of personality. I remember them from my forgotten realms boxed set, so obviously he gets a good response to them and keeps them.

Once again, this issue sets a new high watermark in terms of overall quality of production. With an above average number of good articles as well, several big names making their first contributions, and the comics back in full flow, this is definitely a classic issue. The shit may be hitting the fan in the media at the moment, but the internal situation in the company has never looked better. How long before that runs into trouble and we see the conflicts between Gygax and Arneson that resulted in AD&D and BD&D being branded as completely different games? As ever, on with the adventure. It's all uphill from here.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299677The whole Player/DM level thing is more of the elitism of the era, just more funny this time.  

I don't think it was elitism so much as a need to assess the difficulty of adventures. This was before CRs and CLs. And with so much of the game open to player improvisation, the skill of the players was almost as important as PC power.

For example, in the intro of the Caverns of Thracia the author kind of hems and haws over the difficulty of the dungeon, saying low-level characters can survive if run by experienced players.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299746The rest of the paragraph makes sense if we assume people actually followed those level limit charts in the AD&D1 PHB.  I guess Gary can't be faulted that the vast majority of players ignored his rule.  Multi-classing was too big of an advantage to hand to demi-humans along with the special abilities they already got, especially when they had no level limit cap.  Even still, Gary ascribes too much importance to long term campaign play.  The demi-human drawbacks were a "Juicer Problem."  They only came out in very extended campaigns.  For the typical 3 to 4 month campaign, they drawbacks intended to balance non-humans never came up.

Yep. We played 2-3 times a week, and with character mortality being what it was, and large parties (6-8 PCs) dividing up the EXP, it took about two years for our PCs to reach the levels where demi-human racial limits kicked in. At that point, we weren't about to retire our 8th level halfling fighter or half-elf ranger. So we just ignored them. That meant human PCs were uncommon - maybe a quarter of PCs.

I think Gygax had a tough time getting his head around how all those 10-16 year-olds who made him rich were actually playing D&D, as opposed to how him and his wargamer buddies played it.

Quote from: (un)reason;299794The Dragon Issue 30: October 1979

Not much to say about this one.  This is yet another Dragon mag which (had I been gaming at this point) wouldn't have had any appeal for me.

It's interesting to read between the lines of this issue's editorial.  It seems clear that even at this point RPGers have a reputation of being disturbing "intellectuals."  Kask is using the words as they were in the headlines of the day, and it's clearly meant to be sinister.  How little the world has changed.

The date acquires a new significance in these modern times too.

Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny.  It's a completely nonsensical dungeon.  It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts.  I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things.  Nope.  It was their star module for several months.

The Ninja article would have bored me to death, even at the height of my ninja fandom.

"Boot Hill?  Sure!  But what scale?"  I'm almost frightened to imagine what kind of bizzaro world would have to exist to cause gamers to utter that phrase. In the real world it was more like, "Boot Hill?  Uhm, can we play russian roulette instead?"

Overall, a very dull issue with dry articles.

I'm tempted to make a comment about miniatures, because last issue had an extensive painting guide and this one has a nifty pictorial.  But I figure there will be a better feature somewhere down the line for me to open that can of worms.

The Dragon Issue 31: November 1979

56 pages. Yet more format changes show up this issue. The style of credits becomes the layout that would be familiar to all of you who read it during the 80's and early 90's, positioned on the far right column of the contents spread, along with cover to cover. Which definitely draws more attention to the people responsible. Ahh, cult of personality. How easy it is to be drawn into you. Meanwhile the controversy of last month has already died down, with the guy who was missing found, and it turning out D&D had nothing to do with it. Still, the tabloid sharks have the scent of your blood now. They'll be back.

In this issue:

Trollshead: An excerpt from the second D&D novel, by John Holmes the Basic set designer. A lot less meta than quag keep was, and less funny as well, (aside from having a protagonist named Boinger, which doesn't quite work for me) I suppose that's what you get when the writer isn't a proper author. Still, D&D will inspire far worse later on in its history.

Jungle Fever: 2 articles on adventuring in tropical regions. The first covers the natives, and their societies, while the second covers the flora and fauna. As these are the main topic of the issue, both articles are pretty good,and should help you spice up your adventures. By now you should be getting tired of dungeons and ready to see the world beyond as well.

Pics of the gencon winners for various best games and miniatures categories.

D&D is alive and well in houston: A review of NANCON, and the D&D tournament therein. Another fairly functional article, albeit one that devotes quite a bit of time towards praising the sponsors of the con. Still, these things cost money, so I suppose someone has to help with it. Not that we have to like the capitalist setup.

T1, the village of hommlet out now. Another classic module series starts here. And gets stalled for ages, but hey.

Will jason destroy the flagship?: A set of variant rules for Alpha Omega, based upon the recent TV mini-series. Major spoilers contained herein Seems a little too reliant on each scenario ending the right way, so you progress onto the next one. Such is the danger of trying to represent a linear narrative on a game which can go lots of ways.

Spicing up stellar conquest: Generating alien life for the planets you visit in the game. One of those random table based ones that so speed things up by cutting down your choices drastically. If you've read traveller, this stuff should be pretty familiar to you.

How tall is a giant: Converting various creatures to the correct size and scale of miniature and movement rate, using 25mm scale as the human standard. A fairly math heavy article that nonetheless clarifies quite a bit on D&D's implied setting. Good to see someone bringing a bit of science to selecting our miniatures purchases.

Armor of the far east: Another historical article covering a wide range of time and geography. A good reminder that there is more than one path to building a good suit of protective materials, and it's not just a matter of armor class bonuses vs encumbrance decisions. Shame most of use are forced into the leather/chain/plate paradigm by designer familiarity and habit, even when it's not always culturaly appropriate.

Sage advice! Last seen over 3 years ago in the strategic review 6, this finally becomes a regular column in the format most of us remember, with readers questions answered by a designer.This first column is headed by Jean Wells. In this we have errata on monks fighting prowess. talk of longbows clearance, and using them as melee weapons, a reminder that torturing things is not allowed for paladins, no matter what weasel excuses the player tries to give. Someone boasting about their thousand+ level characters, which isn't really a question. A ruling that Orcs are mammals, and hence do not spawn. Stuff about spells known by magic users and rangers. A question as to how long before Q1 is released. A reminder that you can't program magic mouths to cast spells. And a reminder that the GM is the boss. A pretty solid start, even if a few of the questions don't really fit the format properly.

The Adventurer, A new profession for tekumel: Essentially introducing jacks of all trades, for those of you who don't want to be bound strictly to the primary archetypes. Can't be sure of the balance compared to the other classes, but I suspect it may be slightly overpowered, particularly if you use the other alternate rules in this article.

From the sorcerers scroll: Gary reminds us that the requirements of what makes a good game, and what makes a good novel, are very different, and you shouldn't try and make your games emulate novels, as you'll be disappointed. Well you certainly will if you try and use D&D rules, and indie games where the rules are specifically designed to encourage play that resembles a genre are still a long way off. So much for lets pretend and tell a story like the books you read, it's troupe play or embarrassing death before you get to do anything really heroic. Which shows his calcification somewhat. You've got to change to suit the game, because I don't want you changing the game to suit yourself. AD&D should be played the way it was designed, and not be changed and added too willy-nilly. Together we sigh.

Leomunds tiny hut: Some official house rules on hit points, permanent injury and death by Len Lakofka. Includes one that would later become canon in 3rd ed, that of allowing characters to automatically have maximum hit points at 1st level, so as to be less likely to die from a single hit. Which is one way of handling it. The mutilation rules definitely fall into the category of lots of work for negative reward, and so are far less likely to be adopted. Demand from a few strident letter senders is not the same thing as genuine public demand.

Frederick Macknight continues his story on the formative years of Harry Fischer and Fritz Lieber. This time, he focusses mostly on the differences in setting and rules between the first two boardgames set in lankhmar. Which still reveals some cool things about the setting. Not quite as interesting as the last installment though.

The nazis get even nazier: Tactical thoughts for 3rd Reich. The second world war could have taken some very different directions. Here are some of them. Be afraid.

Out on a limb: A much smaller column this issue. We get  a second case of a person trying to weasel around the paladins code and getting slapped down for it. When will these people learn? You don't tug on supermans cape, and you can't rules-lawyer your way around the paladins code. Plus a load of revisions for WRG, which the staff recieve pretty well. Are they going to have to beg for more letters again soon?

A request for women players to send in their stories for use in a future article. Well, it's been more than 3 years since the last one, and that was incredibly bad, so I suppose it makes sense to do this now.

Reviews: The creature that ate sheboygan, Indian ocean adventure, 4th dimension, Battle of Maiwand, plus lots of mini reviews derived from short impressions at gen con. All are pretty good. They seem to be maintaining their standards in this area as well.

Dragons bestiary; The Ukuyatangi. A giant hydra in the real world sense, this is a slightly meh monster who's ecological position would be taken up by the roper. Grapple with tentacles, pick up, swallow, repeat. You know the score.

Wormy continues. Fineous fingers is absent, because it's creator is busy with his day job in the air force.

The overall quality of production values continues its rapid rise at this point. However, I am less than enthralled with the majority of individual articles this issue. Hopefully this is just a minor blip, and they'll have better ones next time. And maybe you found them more entertaining than I did. So much of these things are subjective, after all. See you next installment.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299922Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny.  It's a completely nonsensical dungeon.  It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts.  I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things.  Nope.  It was their star module for several months.

Well, like all their S modules, it was a tournament one, debuted at the conventions a few months before. That obviously gave it some pretty substantial promotion, as people killed horribly there wanted to see behind the scenes, and inflict it on their own groups.

Quote from: Gabriel2;299922Seeing White Plume Mountain pushed as a major flagship product is pretty funny.  It's a completely nonsensical dungeon.  It seems like it was stocked purely by rolling on random monster charts.  I had always thought it was a filler sort of product, pushed out quietly between bigger things.  Nope.  It was their star module for several months.

We played White Plume mountain when it came out, and it's a great dungeon. The encounters aren't random at all - they were clearly placed to maximize fun and challenge. The giant crab in the volcano caldera, the vampire guarding Whelm, the Efreeti doormen - this is all great fun to play. And every other group I knew at the time did play it and have fun.