Let's read the entire run

The Dragon Issue 33: January 1980

part 2/2

No swords means No Swords!: Stop trying to get around your class restrictions folks. Its Not Allowed, and your god will be very pissed off at you. Ahh, the joy of the old arbitrary restrictions that paid no attention to what god you actually worship. 2nd edition can not come fast enough in this respect.

Mapping the dungeons gets this years entry, which is a quite frightening 13 pages long. Well, it's good for the page count, I suppose. Not every issue can have an adventure to make up its size.

Days of the Dragon, the D&D calendar full of spiffy old artwork out now.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: It uses the lotion or it gets the cane again. Yeah, this time, we get tons of magical lotions, many of which are stat buffs. Each of them only gets a line or two, allowing them to include a hundred different lotions in only 2 pages. Which is pretty useful, and should keep your players from finding the same treasure repeatedly too often.

Sage Advice: Business as usual here. How much is the DMG, and what the hell is a Dungeon masters screen (ahh, the innocence of the past) What do you do to get rid of a 34th level character with 86 magic items. (Give them a managerial job that stops them from adventuring, so the player has to make a new character, otherwise make him retire that character.) What level do rangers and paladins cast spells at (= to their level, and I agree that that shouldn't be the case) Are multiple faerie fire spells cumulative? (no) Can dispel magic negate multiple spells with one casting (yes) Do longevity potions affect both natural and magical aging (well duh, wouldn't be much point to them otherwise) Is invisibility cancelled by tripping over (No) Is a curse removed when you die (It depends) What happens if you try and resurrect a lich. (you get a very pissed off magic user to deal with) Can thieves use bows (no, oddly enough. ) Can humans be multiclassed (no, they can be dual classed, they are completly different things, you doofus.) Can elves and half orcs be raised with raise dead (no, because they don't have souls ) As ever, this is very handy in revealing the weirdness in these old rules, and design thoughts behind them.

The electric eye:Appropriately for the new decade, they've decided to turn their attention to the (not so) new technology of computers. This is basically an explanation of what a computer actually is, aimed at the complete newbie. Some of them enjoy sales in the hundreds of thousands, and can hold up to 64 kilobytes of memory these days. Man, this really takes me back to my first computer, to the incredible annoyance of the zx spectrum 48k. 8 color graphics, several minute loading times with frequent tape errors. I do not miss it one bit.

Reviews: This month we have Wizard, an RPG, and part of the fantasy trip, which would later evolve into GURPS. Wizards quest, a boardgame that has nothing to do with the previous review. The apprentice, Not the TV show, but a magazine. Gamelog, another magazine. Invasion of the air eaters, a boardgame. The average length of reviews is definitely increasing, but they're still mostly description.

Dragons bestiary: Frosts, aka snow pixies. The first contribution to the magazine by Roger Moore, another writer who would go on to play a big part in the development of the magazine. Like regular pixies, they have spell abilities far in excess of their hit dice, and are tricksy bastards. The illustration is particularly large, which is handy, because he skimps a bit on the ecological stuff. Unlike Ed, there's no obvious signs of the greatness he would eventually attain.

Wormy and fineous fingers are firing on all cylinders this issue.

Quality is maintained this issue, with the average length of articles being fairly high, and yet more new developments that would become regular features. They're still far from stable in their structure and all the more interesting for it.

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.

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Y'know, we played this way almost from day one. It wasn't until years later that I learned that this actually wasn't an official rule.

Hussar said:

Y'know, we played this way almost from day one. It wasn't until years later that I learned that this actually wasn't an official rule.

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We started doing it when we got our hands on this issue (it was years later, but we got a bunch of old back issues in a box from a friend's older brother who was moving to college).

The Dragon Issue 34: February 1980

Part 1/2

73 pages. This issue is a Divine Right special, with a whole slew of articles based upon the boardgame. In addition, they also feature their second full module. Not your average issue, in other words. Which is pretty cool.

In this issue:

Dragon rumbles: Once again, tim talks about the oddness of writing for several months in the future. A feeling I am also starting to really understand. He also talks about the next big growth spurt for the magazine and industry, as it looks like D&D is about to be picked up much more by mainstream toy stores. Which will of course coincide with the creation of the moldvay basic set, leading to the biggest period of sales to new players in D&D's history. Next years calendar is also going to have a print run 10 times this years one did. They might be expanding still, but he does definitely seem a little tired of his job. I suppose it's better for him to move on to other things while still excited about gaming in general, than to run it into the ground.

Out on a limb: We get another letter encouraging the idea of loose leaf books that you can take apart and rearrange. A letter praising Mohan's introductory article in issue 30. A letter picking apart the math in How tall is my giant. A letter complaining about the lack of traveller related supplementary material. And a letter complaining about all the articles nerfing magic-users, to which they remind that all the articles in Dragon are optional, and not designed to be used all at once.

Divine right changes from the designer, and The official changes to 2nd ed divine right: two articles that partly complement and partly complete with each other, showing how the creative process can work in a company environment.

The history of Muetar: The original writer of Divine Right expands upon its setting. Like Greg Stafford's boardgames set in Glorantha, it seems likely that the place had been a rich playground for its creators imaginations long before any games were published. And of course we're only seeing a small fraction of it. Oh well. Such is life.

Ambassador cards for Divine Right: Giving your ambassadors personalities like your monarchs. Includes 12 sample cards with various amusing personality and ability quirks.

Sieges in Divine Right: Commentary, plus an optional rule on exactly that topic.

Tom Wham talks about the design process of Divine Right, and gives his own set of variants that hit the cutting room floor. Looks like this game really did go through the committee design process, with everyone at TSR lending their own viewpoints at one point or another.

Nine ways to change the game: Ed Greenwood gives a whole load of ways to tinker with the rules of Divine Right. These really play up just how complex the setting is, and how many different places and people are in the game. It looks like it would be pretty easy to adapt to an RPG setting. Did anyone try this?

Pirates, Ogres and other variations: A bunch of optional rules for Divine Right introducing new power blocs to fight and negotiate with. Again, If you've played it several times and are getting bored of the basic setup, these'll keep things interesting for a while longer.

Up on a soapbox: Don't just recreate historical battle scenarios in your wargaming, invent your own. There are plenty of places in history, where if things had gone a little differently, there would have been some quite interesting match-ups. It then goes on to give plenty of examples. Which span a pretty good range of alternate history from the probable to the fantastical.

Sage advice: Taking a mule into the dungeon? Not a good idea. All sorts of comical but inconvenient stuff could happen. Anyway, on with the rulings. Can a thief wear studded leather (no, (a ruling they would later change)) What the hell are all those weird weapon names. (ahh, polearms, see TD22 for a full guide) Can a periapt of wound closure heal damage from a sword of wounding. (no, only natural rest can, so there healbot.) Are the rules for gods in G,DG&H correct for AD&D (no, we're creating a conversion now.) How do you do mass combat in AD&D? (you can't yet, again, we're working on it. Use Chainmail for now) Can Humans be multiclassed? (no, they can only be dual classed. Do I have to explain the difference to you again) Will this column answer questions for games other than D&D. (no, I do not feel qualified to do so.) Can evil clerics heal their allies? (Yes. Good people can kill their enemies, so of course they can. Alignment is about context as much as actual deeds.) Are there such things as anti rangers and paladins(not officially, and not in my game either.) Are the softcover supplements and the new hardbacks different games? (yes, AD&D and OD&D (and yes, she actually calls it that) are indeed different games) More stuff that shows just how dramatically the game has changed since then, largely towards permitting things.

In defense of the poor magic-user: This article argues that magic-users are not overpowered, their low hit points and equipment restrictions make up for their power, plus they will often be in trouble from using up their spells or not having selected the right one for the challenge today. Yeah, this writer has never heard of the 15 minute adventuring day tactic. And thank god for that, because as soon as it gets into Dragon, everyone'll know about it and want to use it.

For familiar but fearsome fiends: Dungeon building without needing a shitload of supplements. Ahh, the days when you had to regularly run from opponents or die, particularly in the first few levels. Of course you'll still need to determine stats for the multitude of human opponents of various class and level you'll encounter using this table.

Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.

(un)reason said:

Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.

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After this article came out, my friends and I never played Risk without these rules. Many times a game would bog down, as each player built up massive armies on their borders, while "trading" a territory so each could draw a card each turn. Adding nukes ended that strategy and games would usually be decided within an hour or two. I highly recommend this article if playing the original Risk boardgame.

(un)reason said:

How do you do mass combat in AD&D? (you can't yet, again, we're working on it. Use Chainmail for now)

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I have to ask: did 4e once again leave mass combat out of the core books? If so, we're 4 for 4 here!

Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.

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Croesus said:

After this article came out, my friends and I never played Risk without these rules. Many times a game would bog down, as each player built up massive armies on their borders, while "trading" a territory so each could draw a card each turn. Adding nukes ended that strategy and games would usually be decided within an hour or two. I highly recommend this article if playing the original Risk boardgame.

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I'd like to see these rules. I hate Risk because it gets massively bogged down. Let's see the opponent build up that massive army in Yakustk now!

The Dragon Issue 34: February 1980

Part 2/2

From the fantasysmiths notebook: Creading our own custom foam padding to protect your miniatures in transit, so they don't get all dented and bent from jostling against one-another. Which is neat. Plus the article has some amusing illustrations, so I give it high marks for both usefulness and creativity.

D-day, A more accurate variation: House rules for the wargame. Entirely crunch, and so I can't really comment on how good or bad they might be.

Dastardly deeds and devious devices lives up to its name, with 4 nasty variations on blades and pit traps that'll have your players screaming in the aisles as their characters are hit on the head, hamstringed, and then split off from one another so the healbot/cleric can't fix them. Muahahahahaha.

A general knowledge quiz for tekumel. Please do not write on the magazine, whatever they suggest in the article. You'll ruin the fun for everyone else reading it later.

Bolotomus' Revenge: Lotsa neat houserules for the game from issue 11, mostly revolving around making each organ more individual. Nice to see people are still playing it, more than 2 years later.

Whats in a name? Random generation of those pretentious descriptive fantasy names based off elements, animals, weather etc. They're silly enough anyway. When you string two or three descriptive words together by random roll, the potential for ludicrity gets pretty high.

Taking the sting out of scoring: Standardising scoring for tournament play by using a formula for determining the points awarded. Encourages the avoidance of GM fiat wherever possible, by making the categories as specific as possible, so that different groups can be scored fairly, and you can thus get a good benchmark of how good your team was compared to others playing the same module across the world. Which all makes sense, when playing from that kind of viewpoint. I can't fault their logic.

Beware of quirks and curses: Cursed magic items are no fun because players will immediately do anything in their power to get rid of them. Far more interesting are items that have useful abilities, but also have a price or drawback (which can also sometimes be turned into an advantage in its own right) as well, such as making animals afraid of you, or compulsive gambling. That way, it becomes a real choice deciding if they're worth the hassle. Another cool idea that would later be used to great effect in Iron Heroes, and one I thoroughly recommend trying in your games.

Frederick Macknight continues his conversion notes, this time going back the other way. What started out fascinating is rapidly growing very dull. Virtually everyone is interested in gossip about people. Very few are interested in minutinae of rules.

Leomunds tiny hut: Variant combat rules taking greater account of AD&D's system of breaking rounds into segments. As is frequently the case for precision systems like this, it adds huge amounts of extra work keeping track of things. Which as you ought to know by now, is one of my least favourite types of add-on. People forget things, and you have to keep going back to get it right, or just skip over the details, so they don't get used properly anyway.

Bazaar of the Bizarre: Magic fountains. Another one of the classic random screwage items. Do you dare to drink. Are you so thirsty after weeks of dungeoneering that you don't really have a choice. Will the DM even lock you in until someone takes a drink, a tactic they recommend against overcautious players. And you can't even take it with you and use it when better prepared, unlike the bag of beans. Well, as long as everyone has fun, why not use it anyway.

Yay, we finally have actual classified ads coming through.

Reviews: Bushido, a roleplaying game. Hammers Slammers, a book. The Wolfen, A book. The spacefarers guide to alien monsters, a cross-system roleplaying supplement. This issue has a greater amount of criticism of the reviewed products than usual, including one that is completely panned. Which is something I thoroughly approve of. We know that over 90% of everything is crap, but it's your job to tell us what is so we can avoid wasting our money. Only printing positive reviews does not help in that.

Dragons bestiary: the Vilkonnar. A bunch of energy sucking humanoids that make a decent mid range challenge, while not being as annoying as level drainers.

Dragonmirth isn't just a bunch of pics this issue, it also includes an amusing article on degrees of disasters based upon the exclamation used upon encountering them. Which is dreadfully bowdlerised, as they are trying to be a family friendly magazine. Life is strange.

Wormy is here this month. Fineous fingers is not.

Aaand finally, the big tournament module, DOOMKEEP! Fear the cliched name, Ahahahaha!!!!! As this is a tournament module, it is full of horribly tricky puzzles, inventive monsters I've never seen before and killer encounters, including double fakeouts that'll have your players screaming bloody murder. It also gives a proper scoring system, so if people survive you can calculate the winner, and lists the rankings from the convention it was originally played in.

A very full issue, as not only is it the biggest I've faced yet, but it has lots of little articles in addition to the very big one at the end. They continue their policy of having lots of wargaming articles as well as the RPG stuff. I guess there's still quite a bit of demand for that stuff. As ever, there are some bits which are rather dull, but there's still plenty of interesting stuff to discover, particularly in sage advice, which is rapidly becoming very useful to me.

(un)reason said:

We know that over 90% of everything is crap,

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Nice Sturgeon quote.

The Dragon Issue 35: March 1980

Part 1/2

64 pages. A particularly cool cover this issue, Phil Foglio's snowmen of doom. This issue, Traveler gets focused upon, with 5 new articles for it.

In this issue:

Dragon rumbles: This issue marks the retirement of Tim Kask as the main editor, with Jake Jaquet taking over that job. It also marks the point where RPG's really start making it into mainstream toy stores. Having been to the trade convention mentioned last month, it seems that lots of people want in on the action.

Out on a limb: This month we have a letter complaining about character inflation. Two letters about agism in gaming groups, from opposite sides of the spectrum. And an extensive letter justifying the unrealism of simply scaling up human proportions to create giants weights and strengths in the recent article. Once again we see the battle between the people constantly picking unrealistic stuff apart, and the "its just a game" guys, with the TSR staff pretty firmly in the just a game camp.

Errata for AD&D: All three corebooks get extensive goings over, with the changes to be incorporated into the next printings. Also includes stats for those magic items we would have had if the typos hadn't been spotted, such as the Cube of Farce and Manual of Gollums. Goes to show what cabin fever can make seem funny.

Fiction: Oasis, by Cynthia Frazer. A little D&D meets cthuluesque horror adventure. One of those stories that feels like the start of a series.

Jobs, profit and peril: Joining the Interstellar bureau of internal security. Yes, instead of being a military guy, now your PC can be an ex spy with retarded aging. Which means you'll be pretty badass, if you survive to play.

Usefull Skills: Expansions to the traveller skill system. The kind that divides broad skills into more specialist subjects, reducing their individual usefulness, and making it harder to build a well rounded character. Also includes huge anachronisms such as tape recorders which remind me how much real technology has overtaken the visions of technological advancement back then.

The "Other" Options: Creating a civilian character in traveller. Obviously, you'll have more financial and social abilities, and less combat ones, but that doesn't mean you won't be a viable character. And more variety in your team is always a good thing.

More Clout for Scouts: Another traveller article focussed on enhancing the options of a particular character type. I think you can work out which one.

Black Holes! The final traveller article, this of course focusses on the havoc you can cause with black holes providing rules for placing them, spotting them and escaping them. You'd better roll well, because failure means death for the whole crew. God, traveller could be brutal. Seems like death awaits you at every turn

From the Sorcerers Scroll: Gary once again talks about where D&D is going. Demonweb pits and caverns of tsjocanth are coming soon, and they're planning on producing expert and master (but not companion, yet) sets for D&D, to make it into a separate game, intended to be friendly to people who have never played wargames, let alone RP'd before; instead of just something that leads off AD&D. AD&D is getting lots more modules, plus a second book of monsters (although they haven't decided on the name yet) And possibly an AD&D computer game. So lots of stuff is in the pipeline. How long will it take to get it all sorted out? Watch this space. But not too hard, otherwise you'll get very bored. I guess even with their expanding staff, the number of people working for them was still somewhat lower than the amount working for hasbro now.

Leomunds tiny hut: Another set of training rules. This one isn't a joke like the last ones, but is rather time consuming, both in and out of game. Can't people figure out stuff on their own? If only characters of the level needed or higher were able to teach people how to advance in levels, then you would rapidly suffer generational degradation until there were only 1st level characters left. It just doesn't work. Still, if you want to keep players dependent on staying on the good side of your annoying uber NPC's, no matter how powerful they get, this is one way to go about it. (sigh)

(un)reason said:

Feel like RISKing everything?: Incorporating nuclear war into RISK. This will obviously make your games somewhat shorter, unless you also use diplomacy between players. Seems like it should be fun, as it increases the strategic options without slowing the game down.

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So that's where that came from.

Hell, even non-Dragon-readers (including those who don't even know what D&D is) use these rules today.