Let's read the entire run

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 2/4

No campaign ever fails: Monty Haulism gets tackled again, from another perspective. Absolute power is not so important as if that power is fairly earnt, and if the characters are facing challenges commensurate to that power. Even if things have got out of hand, it's entirely possible to change a few things around, and bring them back under your control again. If you use NPC's as trap-springing fodder, a rebellion is pretty likely. If one character starts getting out of hand, award the group an item they can't use. Be very cautious about letting in characters from other campaigns. And if equalizing upward doesn't work, don't be afraid to do a little draining. A fairly balanced tackling of a topic that's never going to go away. Meh.

GURPS! It's finally out! The most modular system ever, according to them. And they're probably not far off. Especially once you add on all the supplements over the years.

Microscopic monsters: Oh, this is nice. Stats for giant versions of microscopic organisms. We've already seen a relation of this for gamma world, so it's no surprise that someone has decided to do similar stuff for D&D.
Protision is a giant amoeba colony that has developed sentience through a communal hive mind. It is slowly growing, has learnt magical abilities, and wants to keep growing until it covers the entire world. What an awesome plot hook. Yoink.
Perdinium shoot little bolts from their pores to attack enemies. They can also produce bioluminescent flashes. If Beholders are related to anything from the real world, it's these guys.
Gonyaulax are tentacled, armored basketballs. In large groups they can really mess up your water supply. Only the tarrasque would drink stuff infested with them.
Ceratium has armor plating and a long saw-like appendage to attack with. Very interesting looking little creature, really.
Noctiluca can not only engulf you or strangle you, it can generate flashes of light with bioluminescence and dazzle you as well. Quite a effective set of hunting tricks there.
Euglena look like tiny squid with only a single tentacle.
Paramecium have lots of little sticky threads covering their exterior. Don't step on them, because they'll eat your foot. They might trap your weapon as well, which is always a pain in the ass.
You ought to know what Amoeba are. Blobby things that engulf their food. Merely gross when watched through a microscope, when they're big enough to consume you, it gets rather scarier. They're considerably less scary than things like ochre jelly and black pudding though. This writer does seem to be rather conservative with his statistics. Eh, slap pseudonatural, paragon and gargantua templates on it and that'll change pretty fast.
Elphidium are a combination of entrapping threads, and a shell-like central part. This means that they're much easier to escape from than they are to kill. They're mostly scavengers, so just steer clear and you won't have to worry too much.
Globigerina are like organic mines. They float around, and then entrap you in their spines. Don't go swimming at night. As if you didn't have enough hassle from bear-sharks.
Dictyostelium is one of those cases where reality is weirder than fiction. Comprised of lots of little mushroom like amoeba, when times get tough, they fuse into one big glutinous mass to migrate to a more suitable place. Like an organic spaceship, this allows them to travel further and protect themselves along the way. As they do so, they form specialist organs, blurring the line between many single celled organism's and one differentiated one. Isn't nature awesome? And the giant ones here are even moreso.
So we've not only got lots of new monsters, but I also know more about real world biology now as well. This is a great example of how reality can be stranger than fiction, and stealing from it is needed to make your stories better. The trick to seeming fresh is to not steal from the same sources as everyone else. And there's certainly plenty of weird corners of the microscopic phyla that don't turn up in fiction very often.

The role of books: Magic kingdom for sale - sold! by Terry Brooks features his usual smug self-righteous writing style. This reviewer doesn't seem to consider that a dealbreaker, however. It makes good use of info from Brooks' original day job to create a twisty plot that seems to keep their interest.
The curse of Sagamore by Kara Dalkey is the amusing tale of a man who really doesn't want to be king, cursed to be so due to his ancestor's funniness. There's plenty of humour, both IC and OOC, and it should give you ideas on how to make your players lives miserable in an entertaining way.
Yonder comes the other end of time by Suzette Haden Elgin ties together magic and psionics, and also ties together her earlier novel series', which had previously been unconnected, into one larger universe. The reviewer is somewhat ambivalent about this shift towards epicness, enjoying it, but not sure if it's justifiable.
Witch blood by Will Shetterly is quite different from his previous book, being a story of witches and magical martial artists. What could become cheese easily, does not, as he creates a dark atmosphere, and a strong narrating voice for the protagonist.
The cross-time engineer by Leo Frankowski tells the tale of a modern day man thrown into 13th century poland, trying to industrialize it early to protect it from the mongols. What ramifications on history will his actions have? Keep reading, because it looks like another long book series ahead
The unicorn quest by John Lee may not be about dragons (again) but the reviewer can't find anything much about it to recommend. Damn you, generic fantasy tropes. :shakes fist: I can see you coming a mile off.
Interstellar pig by William Sleator is an interestingly meta tale of a game of world destroying potential, and what happens when you're not sure if the key to saving your world is winning it or losing it. The various elements are juggled adroitly, in a thought provoking manner. Just what sci-fi should do. After all, silly ideas can allow you to comment on the world in a way that would be ignored or censored in a more serious product.

(un)reason said:

No campaign ever fails: Monty Haulism gets tackled again, from another perspective. Absolute power is not so important as if that power is fairly earnt, and if the characters are facing challenges commensurate to that power. Even if things have got out of hand, it's entirely possible to change a few things around, and bring them back under your control again. If you use NPC's as trap-springing fodder, a rebellion is pretty likely. If one character starts getting out of hand, award the group an item they can't use. Be very cautious about letting in characters from other campaigns. And if equalizing upward doesn't work, don't be afraid to do a little draining. A fairly balanced tackling of a topic that's never going to go away. Meh.

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It's good to keep bringing it up every now and then though. Helps the noobs who aren't familiar with the problem, and as gaming evolves we get new takes on the problems.

Microscopic monsters: Oh, this is nice. Stats for giant versions of microscopic organisms. We've already seen a relation of this for gamma world, so it's no surprise that someone has decided to do similar stuff for D&D.

Click to expand...

Protists in D&D, interesting. I read about a giant protist called Gromia sphaerica recently. They're actually big enough to be seen with the naked eye, and are about the size of a grape. They basically roll around on the ocean floor and get covered with gunk. If the writer had known about them when the article was written (they wouldn't be discovered for another 14 years), I wonder if really BIG versions of them would have been stated up? No matter what kind of weird crap we make up to fill Monster Manuals, evolution always seems to one-up us.

You ought to know what Amoeba are. Blobby things that engulf their food. Merely gross when watched through a microscope, when they're big enough to consume you, it gets rather scarier.

Click to expand...

And when they're big enough to consume whole solar systems?

Interstellar pig by William Sleator is an interestingly meta tale of a game of world destroying potential, and what happens when you're not sure if the key to saving your world is winning it or losing it. The various elements are juggled adroitly, in a thought provoking manner. Just what sci-fi should do. After all, silly ideas can allow you to comment on the world in a way that would be ignored or censored in a more serious product.

Click to expand...

You know, I think I read this book when I was a kid, about the time this issue was published. I'm pretty sure I vaguely remember reading this, and some old neurons I haven't used in about 20 years are starting up again as I think about it. If it is the book I'm remebering, I read a couple of things this guy wrote that I found at the library. The one I really remember was a story about these two people who traveled through time and cloned new body parts when their organs wore out. Because of this, they were a pair of amoral jackasses who did whatever they wanted and ignored the consequenses. I can't remember if the books were any good or not, because a pre-teen generally hasn't had enough world experience to know when something is truely crap.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 3/4

Death of an arch-mage: Looks like we're getting one last module in these pages before Dungeon fires up. And it's quite an impressive one, both in length (21 pages) and ambition. A murder mystery in D&D? Don't see those very often. Amusingly, the tournament pregens are just 1 level too low that they would be able to do some resurrecting, which is good thinking. On the other hand, 2 of them are illegal dual classed characters, which irritates me. It also puts a lot of onus on the DM to set the proper tone, and fill in spurious details to obscure the important bits, which may be problematic. With big chunks of their magical powers forbidden, they'll have to use mundane investigative powers, or choose to go maverick and risk spoiling the case. So yeah, this could be good, or it could be incredibly annoying, and go disastrously wrong very easily, it very much depends on having the right DM and players.

TSR previews is back to the right way around. Dragonlance is getting pole position this month, with DL13: Dragons of truth. Can they pass the nine tests of truth? Can they beat Takhisis? Considering the next module is called Dragons of Triumph, the odds seem good. It's also getting another calendar for 1987. Seems a bit early to release one now. Eh. Get a few months just looking at the pictures before you have to write on it.
AD&D is also getting REF2: the revised player character sheets. Unearthed Arcana made the previous ones redundant. Ahh, joy. Another excuse to sell you almost the same stuff again.
D&D gets IM1: The immortal storm. So you made it this far. Can your adventures as a god match up to the ones that came before? Well, at least they're trying to support it. We also get X11: Saga of the shadow lord. See, if you were the previous characters you could wipe out an army of undead no trouble. Oh well. Guess it's not heroism if it's not a struggle.
Our solo gamebooks get the Sorcerer's crown, book number 9. Our first one that follows on from a previous book. Will it involve further sequels? The dread hand of metaplot reaches into even here.
Marvel Superheroes gets MA1: Children of the atom. All about the mutants of the marvel universe, and adventures for them. As this is the advanced game, the supplements are bigger. Are they better. Wish I could tell you.
Amazing stories unleashes it's second anthology. Visions of other worlds. Containing stories from some of the biggest names in sci-fi. Have their prophecies been proved correct? Since this is a retrospective, I'm betting at least a few of them have.

Profiles: Jeff Grubb is of course one of TSR's most awesome game designers. The son of a teacher man, he's always been pretty damn smart. (apart from maybe thinking playing D&D would be a great way to meet girls, but even that seems to have worked out for him. ) He's responsible for the gods of the Dragonlance setting, the name of the planet the Forgotten realms is set in, virtually the whole of the marvel superheroes RPG, and is now writing the manual of the planes. His contributions are pretty much inextricably linked with gaming as we know it. Go him.
Anne Gray McReady is one of our editors. She's completely normal, honest! Nothing to see here at all! Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Anyway, she's responsible for editing all 5 of the BECMI boxed sets, as well as writing the savage coast, so she has made some cool contributions to the D&D universe. Ah pity da foo who believes her lack of hype.

Pull the pin and throw: Grenades! We've seen quite a few questions on them show up in Spy's advices over the years. Guess they thought it merited a whole article. So we get three pages of dry stuff like how they're constructed, what they have in them, concussion radii, a scatter diagram, and the all important damage done. Will this settle those arguments, or just reignite them, in ever more fiddly nitpicking detail? Either way, I'm not very interested by this article. Another load of crunchy filler to keep up the page count with.

Fiction: File under B by Esther M Friesner. Oh dear oh dear. The buttoned up young librarian runs across a near-naked barbarian warrior transported into the library by the evil wizard he was fighting. My oh my :fans self: This can't possibly be happening. We must get him out of here before somebody sees. He can't really be from a fantasy world, surely? But if he is then maybe the index can help me get him back. Now, is it in fiction or nonfiction? And then they get back to his world, great acts of heroism are done, bosoms start heaving from the exertion, and it all has to be faded to black before the author starts typing one-handed. Ahh, fantasies. Isn't it great being able to sell them. This is cheesecake, but amusing cheesecake, obviously written by a woman, for women. Nice to see them tackling the problems mentioned in the letters page. Can they keep that up, or will the accusations of sexism be back again soon enough. At this stage, I'm gonna take the pessimistic view. Some people will always bitch, especially if you bend over backwards to accommodate them and they think they can get more stuff that way.

Orius said:

Protists in D&D, interesting. I read about a giant protist called Gromia sphaerica recently. They're actually big enough to be seen with the naked eye, and are about the size of a grape. They basically roll around on the ocean floor and get covered with gunk. If the writer had known about them when the article was written (they wouldn't be discovered for another 14 years), I wonder if really BIG versions of them would have been stated up? No matter what kind of weird crap we make up to fill Monster Manuals, evolution always seems to one-up us.

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Most galling isn't it. You bust your ass trying to think up a really cool idea and get it polished up, and then find nature has already done it better.

And when they're big enough to consume whole solar systems?

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You use the matrix of leadership to light our darkest hour and destroy it in the nick of time, of course.

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 4/4

Dark phoenix gets on the cover of the ARES section. She then gets a good going over in their first article. How do you portray and play characters as ridiculously powerful as that in your game? You'll have to take things away from direct fights, and concentrate more on the emotional aspects and fallout of the drama. Or just make sure you have some characters with invulnerability or huge amounts of plot immunity. Remember, in comics, resurrection is always an option. Just don't do it too often and cheapen death completely. An interesting topic to cover.

Maxima: Villains and Vigilantes shows off it's own maxed out capabilities. Which are actually considerably less than FASERIP's, but there you go. Maxima is a geneticaly engineered superwoman from the future, with all stats at an obscene level (and a weight of 663lbs Is that a specific artifact of the system's tables? ) superspeed, regeneration, but no real powers that aren't just human potential+. We also get a little more advice on using a character like this in your games, particularly if the other PC's aren't as powerful as this. Pairing off groups so each character has a suitable opposite may seem cheesy, but it's an established genre trope, so you shouldn't feel guilty about using it. Everyone has weaknesses, and you shouldn't be afraid to use them either. Even with different power levels, everyone can get a chance to shine if you design adventures right.

Supergirl: Well, this is nice. Our theme continues with a DC heroes article. I'm betting stats for Superman already appear in the corebook, but if you want to showcase obscene power of a kind PC's would expect to have, then supergirl is your next good bet. Despite her power, she's certainly got beaten around, minded, romantically screwed over, and eventually killed with great glee. And as Jim Ward showed, way back in the monty haul days, it's entirely possible for a sadistic GM to follow that example, no matter how powerful you are. We get more advice on how to run high powered characters in general. When collateral damage is a constant threat, and you're the good guys, you really can't cut loose with your powers the way you'd like too. If they can travel miles in seconds, make them split their attention. If they can move planets, then they'd better get to use that power. Tailor the villains to the heroes, and put them through the wringer. Just like the real comic books. Remember, the more powerful and versatile the characters are, the less you have to play nice, because if they're using their brain, they can solve even problems that don't have a designated solution. (unless you're playing something like Armageddon or Aberrant, where damage scales faster than ability to absorb it, so characters paradoxically become more fragile against equal opponents at higher level. ) Another interesting article that once again puts a different spin on the same topic.

The marvel-phile: With a ton of supers stuff already and his own profile this month, Jeff's contribution gets heavily edited to fit on one page. Longshot, an alien stuntman with powers appropriate to his name. The switch to Advanced hasn't altered the formula of these entries significantly. As this is another character I've never heard of before, isn't that interesting, and will likely never see again, I can't muster much enthusiasm for this one. Hopefully having his writing butchered won't dull his enthusiasm though, because it would be a shame to see him lose it.

Quantum: Our final article tackles the same subject they've been tackling all through the section, only for a different system. Finally, it's Champions' turn to get some advice on how to handle characters of different power levels. This concentrates on scaling your characters, and scaling the opposition to them. It includes the eponymous character Quantum, who's power level fluctuates randomly due to some rather clever build tricks. She can challenge gods one day, and then get her ass kicked by a gang of thugs the next. Which is quite pleasing, both that the game can handle weirdness like this, and that there are plenty of people who have no problem with really high level games here. Plus the writeup and illustrations are pretty cool. This is quite a nice way to finish off the section, even if it is a bit galling that it's been comprised entirely of superhero articles. Still, at least they're trying with the themes, and the april fools jokes and stuff when the rest of the magazine isn't. That stuff sometimes gets excluded because of this is the price you pay. If it's good stuff it'll just show up a few issues later anyway.

The Snarfquest gang has to get away with the treasure they just found. Dragonmirth shows us a real monty haul dungeon. Wormy features more variscaled adventures.

Overall, a pretty good issue, if another one that was a real effort to get through. Still, in this case it was definitely worth it, with new developments in game design, lots of info on dungeon's start-up, and a good send-off for adventures; and a very interesting and well-focused Ares section. They're still probably not getting quite enough good material to justify their bigger size, but since so much of that is a matter of taste anyway, I'm not going to complain too much about that. And it looks like the spate of development and reorganization is going to continue into next issue, which seems promising. But that's a tale for another day. I'm not Schazerade, and I don't think always starting a new story before the night is over and finishing in the middle would suit the source material. Cliffhangers get tiresome after a while, so lets just leave it at this.

(un)reason said:

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986
Microscopic monsters: Oh, this is nice. Stats for giant versions of microscopic organisms.

Click to expand...

Oooh! I remember that article! Do I get a cookie?

So, I guess it's the oldest dragon issue I've actually read. Add another year and you'll arive at the first issue I still own

(un)reason said:

Dragon Issue 111: July 1986

part 4/4

Maxima: Villains and Vigilantes shows off it's own maxed out capabilities. Which are actually considerably less than FASERIP's, but there you go. Maxima is a geneticaly engineered superwoman from the future, with all stats at an obscene level (and a weight of 663lbs Is that a specific artifact of the system's tables? ) superspeed, regeneration, but no real powers that aren't just human potential+. We also get a little more advice on using a character like this in your games, particularly if the other PC's aren't as powerful as this. Pairing off groups so each character has a suitable opposite may seem cheesy, but it's an established genre trope, so you shouldn't feel guilty about using it. Everyone has weaknesses, and you shouldn't be afraid to use them either. Even with different power levels, everyone can get a chance to shine if you design adventures right.

Supergirl: Well, this is nice. Our theme continues with a DC heroes article. I'm betting stats for Superman already appear in the corebook, but if you want to showcase obscene power of a kind PC's would expect to have, then supergirl is your next good bet. Despite her power, she's certainly got beaten around, minded, romantically screwed over, and eventually killed with great glee. And as Jim Ward showed, way back in the monty haul days, it's entirely possible for a sadistic GM to follow that example, no matter how powerful you are. We get more advice on how to run high powered characters in general. When collateral damage is a constant threat, and you're the good guys, you really can't cut loose with your powers the way you'd like too. If they can travel miles in seconds, make them split their attention. If they can move planets, then they'd better get to use that power. Tailor the villains to the heroes, and put them through the wringer. Just like the real comic books. Remember, the more powerful and versatile the characters are, the less you have to play nice, because if they're using their brain, they can solve even problems that don't have a designated solution. (unless you're playing something like Armageddon or Aberrant, where damage scales faster than ability to absorb it, so characters paradoxically become more fragile against equal opponents at higher level. ) Another interesting article that once again puts a different spin on the same topic.

Click to expand...

Yeah, in V&V your weight was important. Your melee damage was based off of it, so the more you weighed, the more damage you did in a punch-up. But their rules for powers were table based, so with some really good rolls you could have a twinked out character. Especially as some of the sub-tables allowed for extra rolls! (IIRC the plant/animal tables were like this. You could just keep on rolling those funky powers, many of which stacked, if the right numbers came up.)

And, yep, Supes was statted in the original rules. As for his cousin, I'd like to see a version of her with all the powers she's had. (Off the top of my head, she had the usual Kryptonian powers, augmented so she was immune to green K by Mr. Mxwhatsisname, got retconned into being an ancient Atlantean with magic powers, was/is Power Girl, was a shapechanging blob, and had magic angel powers! And I'm sure I must be missing a few.)

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 1/4

108 pages. Looks like their promise to change things wasn't a hollow one. Straight into the contents page, and the Ares section is conspicuous by it's absence. Well, I guess last month's one was as good a send-off as any, both in the sense of being a good, well focussed one, and also a demonstration of how thoroughly it had been hijacked from it's original purpose by superheroics. Some people aren't going to be happy about these changes, and indeed, Kim isn't too happy about all of them either. Some hard decisions had to be made here, and he's really hoping they were the right ones. Still, better to try something new than trudge along in the same old rut year in, year out. I guess now all he can do is wait for the vitriol to come in, see if more people approve or disapprove. And although my opinion obviously doesn't matter when it comes to the direction of the magazine, I'm pretty curious as well. So lets take a gander.

In this issue:

Letters: Michael Selinker sends in a bunch of revisions for Death of an Arch-Mage. Kim takes this fairly well, considering. I'm sure this didn't ruin the adventure for many people, since this is only a month later, and it takes time to finish off adventures and move onto the next one.
Dearie dearie me. The house in the frozen lands also gets a load of errata. More fixing needed. Oh, the horrors of being an editor on a monthly publication.
Some mathematical corrections about the volume of water. Tripped up by the basics again. Talk about calling attention to your mistakes.

The forum: James A Yates thinks that extremely big and strong people should be able to wield giant sized weapons, albeit maybe at a penalty. It's cool imagery, so yeah, I mostly agree with you there.
Margaret M Foy thinks that if TSR are going to be all edgy about putting christianity into D&D, they should show just as much respect to other religions as well. If they do that, the only pantheons they'll have are entirely self-made ones. Do you really want that? Definitely a case of can't please everyone.
Thomas M Kane disagrees with some of the corrections about radioactivity. According to his textbooks, his numbers are mostly right. Ahh, science. Remember, science is a method of thinking and acting, not a fixed set of facts. If you're just parroting what someone else says without testing it, you're not being very scientific.
Darcy Stratton is another person deeply annoyed by the sexism inherent in the AD&D game. These strength limits have knock-on effects on classes acessable and maximum level, especially to demihumans. (Why the hell are gnomes and dwarves even more dimorphic than humans? Realism is not a good justification there.) This degree of bigotry is unacceptable in my escapism! Amazing just how much of a deal a few points difference becomes when it's personal. Fraid you'll have to wait another 3 years for the new edition to fix that. Or play BD&D. They've never been sexist over there.

Dawn of a new age: Welcome to a new era. We've already seen a few of the new changes, but here Kim really talks about what he's up too. The people have spoken, and he's done his best to sort out the signal from the noise. Of course, one of the things they've spoken most clearly on is that there's too much sci-fi in Dragon. Buncha philistines. :shakes head: So the Ares section is gone, and we've cut our intended amount of sci-fi per issue in half. Hopefully that'll strike a balance between the people who like it, and the people who would rather see it eliminated entirely. Computer gaming is of course, on the up, and they intend to keep track of that, which I have no objection too at all. The trickier question, is of course, how they recapture the magic of the old issues, whatever the hell that was. The decision they've come to is to stop worrying so much about making sense and getting everything perfectly lined up, and publish articles more on the basis of them being interesting than if they have solid rules. That sounds like it has the potential to go oh so very wrong, and bring in a new glut of overpowered, poorly thought out optional stuff. Set your quality control filters to defcon 2. This does not look promising. I said you could have phrased your questions better.

Dinosaurs get another feature on them. This is one of those things that turns up again and again. They're really trying to go for a definitive take this time, with an epic 18 page article that hopefully will keep people satisfied at least until the next edition comes around. Taking a quite scientific approach to the subject this time, instead of listing tons of discrete species, they decide to give one set of basic stats for each genera, and then show you how to scale things up and down for a whole bunch of variants to challenge groups of various power levels with. Aetosaurs, Anklyosaurs, Carnosaurs, Ceratopsians, Giant sea turtles, Coelurosaurs, Crocodilians, Cynodonts, Deinonychusaurs, Dicynodont, Ichthyosaurs, Labyrinthodonts, Moasaurs, Nothosaurs, Ornithomimosaurs, Ormothpods, Phytosaurs, Placodonts, Pleiosaurs, Pliosaurs, Prosauropods, Proterosucians, Pseudosucians, Pterosaurs, Rhynchosaurs, Sauropods, Scelidosaurs and Stegosaurs. Whew. That ought to keep you going for quite some time, especially if you remember to include lots of variants on each body type as actually existed back then. It includes plenty of advice on how to run a game where dinosaurs feature, either tangentally, or playing a big part, along with lost world areas full of flora from their era as well. A very comprehensive article, that is both well researched, and keeps one eye firmly on making sure you produce a playable game with this stuff instead of getting bogged down in historical detail. While not quite as good as most of the planar articles in sheer epicness and imagination, it's just as good in terms of opening up a milieu further for play, and is in very much the same spirit. Which Is something I do like. Other eras and areas of the world can be almost as alien as other universes, and you can have fantastic adventures while barely traveling in a conventional sense. A very solid article indeed.

Battletech! Pilot your own mech! Hello to another fun game.

Revenge of the nobodies: Now here's a good demonstration of their desire to tackle more quirky topics. Commoners may seem innocuous, but you ignore them at your peril, for they provide much of the infrastructure that you depend on, regardless of level, (unless you're a live off nature type like druids and rangers) and slaughtering them will not benefit you in the long run, even if you have the power. So we have lots of demonstrations of how and why the peasants might become revolting. Many of them are incredibly funny, while also making a twisted kind of sense when you apply proper logic and knowledge of human nature to the fantastic elements of the setting. I can certainly picture tedious 'elf and safety people trying to force all the halflings to wear shoes, and the resulting backlash; and we've already had one examination of the support industry spell components can build up last issue. Disrupting parts of the setting that people have previously taken for granted is always interesting, if sometimes rather frustrating, and it does make a good learning experience. A deserved classic, that I fully intend to steal from when I get the chance.

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 2/4

The role of computers: Hmm. For their second column, the Lesser's tackle one of the great old games of yore. Rogue. A game that's so distinctive, it has an entire subgenre named after it. Create a character, and then venture into a randomly generated (and exceedingly brutal) dungeon. Explore and fight your way down to the bottom level to find the macguffin. Most games would stop there. But no, you then have to fight your way back up again, facing even tougher enemies along the way. You can save the game and stop for a rest, but if you die, it automatically wipes your slot, and you have to start from 1st level, in an all new dungeon where your previous knowledge of the routes and object positioning is useless. It's a very direct analogue of your old skool dungeoncrawling experience, encouraging extreme caution and clever tactical use of items rather than running in swinging if you want to survive and win. With it's tremendous challenge and huge amount of replayability, it, and games based off it such as nethack, still enjoy a small but highly devoted fanbase today. This is a topic I'm very pleased to see them cover, as while it may not actually involve roleplaying, it's a very close relation of RPG's, and has plenty of relevance to gamers. It's a great example of how both computer games and RPG's have become far more forgiving over the years, with way less permanent death and having to start from the beginning if you lose. If they keep up with this kind of stuff, then I'm definitely going to enjoy their new direction.

Cloaked in magic: Not everything has changed around here, however. Yes, its another one of those articles where Elminster elaborates on a particular class of magical items, giving us a whole load of interesting variants to play with. After all, why mess with a winning formula? So here's 9 cloaks, all of which are pretty damn handy.
The cloak of battle traps your opponent's weapons, allowing you to cut them down unopposed.
The cloak of comfort protects you from the weather, and even magical heat and cold based attacks.
The Cloak of fangs is a single use device which allows you to suicide in style, taking out everyone around you.
The cloak of many colors is the inspiration for a terrible terrible musical.
The cloak of reflection reflects certain spells, ruining attackers days.
The cloak of stars allows you to unleash powerful spells stored in it's threads, but unpredictably, as it's hard to tell which star corresponds to which power.
The cloak of survival isn't as impressive as the ring of the same name, but as it never runs out of charges, that's not such a terrible deal. 10 minutes survival in space is still a lot better than nothing.
The cloak of symbiotic protection is one of Ed's delightfully quirky creations. It may be a living organism itself, and in return for a slight drain on your HP, it also protects you from fungal infestations, disease, and most critically, the various oozes, slimes and molds that can so ruin your day without a proper battle in old skool dungeons. This may be a nuisance, or incredibly useful, depending on your DM.
The cloak of the shield allows you to generate a protective wall of force around you. It can also be used actively as a telekinetic object, and definitely rewards inventiveness.
While these aren't as powerful as say, his magical swords, Ed has once again managed to produce items that are a cut above the rest in terms of both descriptive detail, and inventiveness of powers. As ever, it'll be a real choice as to which one to wear if you have several, as they are all useful, albeit in different situations. Better spoiled for choice than having an obvious optimal one that makes any other build look stupid from a metagame perspective though.

Armor, piece by piece: And the run of really cool articles comes to an end, with a little one which introduces a rather complicated new system for hit locations, and the amount different types of armour protect you on different parts of your body. While not a terrible idea, implementing this will add 2 extra rolls to every single attack in combat. I really have no desire for the amount of slowdown that would cause. Very much a filler article.

TSR previews is the wrong way round again. Get your act together! Anyway, next month sees the release of the compiled version of the GDQ module series. Follow on from T1-4 and A1-4 to make the ultimate AD&D adventure path, taking you from 1st level to the mid-teens, and challenging a god. Woo. What will they do for an encore? I'll tell you one thing, it won't be I9: Day of Al'Akbar. You'll already be way too high level for the tale of this legendary artifact.
On the fiction side, Dragonlance finishes it's second trilogy, with Test of the Twins. Looks like going to the abyss is currently the cool thing for big heroes to do. Question is, how will they get out? We shall see.
Marvel super heroes gets a pair of gamebooks from our husband and wife team. Jeff Grubb gives us The amazing spider-man in City in Darkness, while Kate Novak delivers Captain America in Rockets Red Glare. Talk about keeping it in the family.
Zeb Cook continues to push Oriental Adventures with a one-on-one gamebook set there. Warlords features the battle between the usurper of the throne, and it's rightful heir. Who will triumph in your game?
Gamma world gets it's first module in ages. GW6: Alpha factor. The start of an epic series in which you quest to restore civilization. Will it all get published, or will the game peter out again before they get it done? Don't try and make an epic if you don't have the budget.
And finally, we have a very intriguing development. Steve Jackson (the american one) is collaborating with TSR to bring you Battle Road, a solo Car Wars gamebook. I never expected that. Was it any good? Did it help expand their fanbase?

The ultimate article index is this month's centerpiece, the last time they would attempt to fit in details on everything they've done. As it eats up 20 pages of extra small type, you can understand why. There comes a point where you can't keep looking back, and holding on to everything you've ever done; but have to move on, and this definitely seems like theirs. This is also the perfect time for me to look over the first 10 and a bit years of the magazine, and reminisce about the bits that most caught my attention. (well, given how few articles this issue has by comparison with their recent ones, this'd be a rather short review if I didn't. )

A is for alignment. We've seen it go from the three categories, to 5, to 9, with a couple of odd and amusing variants, plus a whole load of articles and flamewars over the years. It's form is one of the things that makes D&D unique, and separates it from both reality and most fiction. There are plenty of different ways it can be used, but just as often, people have decided it wasn't worth the hassle and pretty much ignored it in their games. That's the advantage and drawback of vaguely defined, sweeping systems. Everyone will see something different in their own image.

B is for Boot Hill. One of their first other games, this got a moderate amount of coverage in early issues, but like so many things, wound up fading away unheralded as the sales couldn't compete with D&D. It really should have come out a decade or two earlier, as Westerns were already in decline by the late 70's. At least they tried. It's not their fault D&D outsold everything else they did by several factors.

C is for Campaigns. One of the big ways in which D&D has already evolved during the course of the magazine is a much greater emphasis on building a detailed world. People like Katharine Kerr and Lew Pulsipher have driven this cause forward over the last few years, with advice both interesting and dull on building people and places, and weaving them into a coherent universe. We've also had stuff on proper DM'ing, including rather too much on how to depower or reset a game that's got out of hand. This is one topic that isn't going away any time.

Dragon Issue 112: August 1986

part 3/4

D is of course for Dragon. Every year we get at least one article on them. Some are good, some are bad, and some are mediocre. But the important thing is that the namesake of both the game and the magazine remains one of their most fleshed out monsters, with tons of variants usable in all sorts of rules, suitable for any campaign. From rampaging monster to sage to urbane loan shark to embodiment of the land, they can do all sorts of things. Like alignment, without them, you aren't really playing D&D.

E is for Ed Greenwood and Elminster. By a big margin both their most prolific and capable all round writer. By coincidence, It's also for Ecology. Fitting, really, as he's produced some of our most kick-ass ecologies, and Elminster has participated in some of them. Long may he contribute to the magazine.

F is for From the Sorcerer's scroll. Gary's regular column in which he pontificated on whatever came to mind. New rules, news, reviews, vitriol. All have been thrown in and stirred together to produce a fascinating, if not always palatable stew for us to consume. He always had a rather different writing style to everyone else, but somehow it worked. Genius, madness, or both? Whichever, he created an entire new genre of games and took it to multimillion sale success within a decade, so he must have ben doing something right. And his contributions to the magazine allowed us to see his ideas raw, as he came up with them. Do you only want to see people's ideas once they've gone through layers of redrafting, editing, polishing and committee input? You're missing out on a lot if you do.

G is for Gods. One of the biggest sources of new crunch and fluff has been articles on deities. From the seemingly endless followups to G: DG&H introducing new real world pantheons, to Len's Suel pantheon stuff which also developed the idea of cleric powers being differentiated by the god they serve. The cosmic beings of your universe are an important part of it, especially when 1/4 of your PC's are supposed to get their powers from serving one. Not defining them properly will result in a shallow setting.

H is for Hell. One of this magazine's and Ed Greenwood's shining moments are the three epic articles he did on the nine hells. Between them, we have nearly 50 pages of creatures, places and ideas, all brilliantly constructed and evocatively written. Not strictly judeo-christian, but still drawing heavily on that mythos, this is a great place to adventure. You can play it as the ultimate hack and slash dungeon, world spanning conspiracy horror, or dangerous high stakes political negotiations. Whichever way, it's awesome with an extra helping of awesomesauce on top.

I is for Imagination. As in use your own, goddamnit! The number of letters they have to deal with from people quibbling over the official ruling on stupid details must drive them mad. Canon is not important. The game is yours to twist and add to as you see fit. If you want prepackaged entertainment to simply consume, go to another hobby.

J is for Jesters. The mascot and ringleader for their yearly dose of april mischief. Because having a sense of humour is important. The real world is full of ridiculous things, (look down your own trousers if you doubt me for a second. ) and if you're all serious, all the time, people wind up ignoring you. By injecting strange and sometimes silly elements into an overall serious product, you massively increase it's appeal, making it more likely to be paid attention too, and eventually taken seriously, ironically. They might have very different writing styles, but one of the reasons both Gary and Ed are so successful is because they are often rather witty and amusing, and sometimes silly.

K is for Kender. An excellent demonstration of my previous point. Dragonlance's cheese factor has always been a bit too high for me to digest. ( Although I did try back in the day. To my eternal shame, I made my highest set of stats ever rolled legitimately with method I a Kender Ranger/Bard. I still have the character sheet.) but plenty of people have eaten it up, and the world still has a decent fanbase. Honorable mention also goes to the Kzinti, who've also got a surprising amount of airtime in the magazine. I have no objection at all to Larry Niven's stuff showing up here, so those were welcome cameos.

L is for Leonard Lakofka and Leomund's tiny hut. Of all the regular contributors to the magazine, he's been the one I've disagreed with most frequently and consistently. He has managed to produce some cool stuff, such as the elemental planes stuff, incremental saves, and of course, Carnivorous flying squirrels , but on the whole, I haven't enjoyed reading stuff written by him. What does this say about me? What does this say about him? Damned if I can figure it out.

M is for module. We've seen plenty of them in the magazine, but that's a thing of the past. Still, we have more than enough to take you from starting level to early teens and still have some choices of route. And that's not even counting the non D&D ones. I look forward to trying some of them out. Honorable mention also goes to Minarian Legends. Divine Right became the wargame that got the most consistent coverage in the magazine, with both rules variants, and a richly detailed setting built up for it over a couple of years. It really would be a great candidate for a revival or licensing as a setting to other media.

N is for Nerf. Putting stuff back in pandoras box once you've taken them out is always a tricky business. In another marvelously appropriate coincidence it's also for ninja. One of the classes introduced in the magazine that most needed a little nerfing. The mysterious orient is always a good excuse for people to sneak in a little power creep.

O is for Oriental, in another incidence of one thought leading appropriately to the next. The love of eastern stuff did not start with anime, or even kung fu movies. Forget not Fu Manchu and the many pulp stores that featured mysterious characters from the east, and all the, erm, fun our ancestors got up to and wrote about in colonial times. While we have seen a few articles, this is a rich seam for mining that they can still do a lot more on in this magazine.

P is for Psionics. While generally neglected, it does hold the distinction of getting the themed issue with the most articles devoted to it's topic. Honorable mention also goes to polearms, which have got less attention than the flak they get would credit. Sure Gary was interested in them, but there's plenty of things that he was interested in more. Just because other games neglect them, does not make D&D weird.