Let's read the entire run

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 60: April 1982

part 2/2

Gaming magazine. This years april fool is presented as a generic alternative to Dragon. It's rather more sensible than the previous couple, with most of the content still useful for a game despite its flavour. No filking, either. Maybe next year.

Flight of the boodles: Another complete little game. While humorous in its visuals, this is a perfectly playable little game for one or two players. Yet another fun thing to try out if I get the chance.

The jester: Oh dear god no. Not another version of this class. Be very very afraid, because these ones are statistically legal, and really rather scary. I guess they have to be to survive, given the suboptimal tactics they have to use. Use one as the big bad if you want your players to enjoy beating them way too much.

Darmuids last jest: Heard the saying I died laughing. Well, now you can make it happen, with this optional special bard power. Not recommended for use in actual play.

Midgets in the earth: Ha. This month's generic parody characters, not based on real people or tv shows at all, no siree bob; are Idi Snitmin the kobold commando, Eubeen Hadd the halfling thief guildmaster, and Morc the orc. These guys are far less twinked than their serious offerings, which I find very ironic. Idi in particular is a good example of how even kobolds can be pretty terrifying if they have the right equipment and tactics. We'll be seeing that topic again several times, only taken seriously.

Artist of the month: Phil Foglio gets fulsome praise from Kim. Which is then immediately undermined. Nice to see they can still poke fun at their own reputations.

Dragon's bestiary: More cartoon creatures to give your players nightmares. The green giant, (who could be absolutely horrifying if played straight) Donald duck, Taz, Marvin the Martian, Baseball Bugbears, and the dreaded Werebeaver (with Wally) Most are just about statistically usable, as long as you can stand the things your players'll throw at you for inflicting them upon their characters.

Outfitting the new agent: Back to the serious stuff. Or is it? I can't be sure with Gary's writing. This could almost be a parody of the standard questions list you ask about your character, such as eye colour, hair, date of birth, etc. It is rather dry. This is the kind of stuff people should do automatically if they like roleplaying. And if they just play to kill stuff, they don't need to go to all the effort of thinking up details like this. Meh.

The trojan war: Glenn Rahman gives us a slew of variants for his new game. He is a busy bunny lately. More flexibility is often a good thing, and this is as well thought out as most of his offerings.

Pooka: Oh god. Speaking of bunnies. Not another unkillable pain in the ass trickster monster. If you're gonna give us these, you could at least stat them out fairly, not make them more powerful than most gods. And they bring time travel into it as well, which is also a massive pain in games. Make it go away.

Figuratively speaking gives us three dragons, plus a set of elementals, Orcs, lizard men, dwarves, and buildings. Nothing scores below 5 as usual, but they are generous enough to give out one 9 this month.

A view of the nine philosophies: Is it that time again? Yes, it is. What time is it? It's chico:bang!: You die now! :sound of record player being smashed, crickets chirping:
Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. It's alignment debate time. This is the one that delineates the Good-evil axis as the moral one, and the law-chaos one as the ethical one. Which I guess is fairly significant. This is a fairly non controversial article as they go. It's most controversial point is probably that specific laws are not neccacarily Lawful, (and indeed, a badly designed legal system can actively result in a chaotic society) and breaking external laws is therefore not neccacarily chaotic. It also subscribes more toward the neutral as balance seeking rather than neutral as disinterest in moral matters or self-interest. But it does not view alignment as a straightjacket, and actively promotes the idea that most people are not going to perfectly fit into one. It's a measurement of the sum of their actions, not a set of sides people actively choose. I don't have a problem with this.

The dragon's augury: Spawn of fashan! Oh boy, this is a doozy of a review that I remember seeing reprinted elsewhere. The reviewer winds up concluding that this game is a diliberate parody of RPG's, as that's the only way it could make any sense. Reading the actual play is far more fun than actually trying to play the game. Comedy gold, if not in the same league as F.A.T.A.L. (but then again, Darren's review would eat up a whole issue. I don't think they'd allow that.)

Wormy once again goes off on a completely insane tangent. What's new summons cthulhu. Dragonmirth is missing, but not missed as they have more than enough jokes in the rest of the magazine, thank you very much.

A slightly understated issue compared to some april fools ones. But it does have some genuinely funny stuff, such as the fiction and the review. Plus more official stuff that would continue to be used in many books to come. It's certainly not a bad one for the period.

 

[Maggan]

A letter from Gary sneering at recent attempts to make archery more "realistic", as that stuff does not improve the game's actual fun quotient.

Interesting, especially if contrasted to "the tyranny of fun" debates that have been raging on and off fairly recently.

Does anyone remember if Gygax's comment about what is fun and what is not fun sparked a controversy back in the days? I remember that the level of realism was hotly debated among the gamers I know, and that most of us were on the "realism" bandwagon (although I now feel that what we believed to be realism was more a question of more detailed rules reflecting popular myths about history).

But at least at the time, I wouldn't have agreed with Gygax's assessment of the quality of fun in relation to realism. On a general level I'm not sure I agree even today, although my own style veers towards less realism. To each his own and all that.

/M

 

[(un)reason]

Interesting, especially if contrasted to "the tyranny of fun" debates that have been raging on and off fairly recently.

Does anyone remember if Gygax's comment about what is fun and what is not fun sparked a controversy back in the days? I remember that the level of realism was hotly debated among the gamers I know, and that most of us were on the "realism" bandwagon (although I now feel that what we believed to be realism was more a question of more detailed rules reflecting popular myths about history).

It does get a few replies in the next few issues, but it certainly isn't a full-grown flame war on the level of the dwarven beards debate, or gary's rants attacking other companies. The battles on how realistic the game should be, of course, never go away. In a way, every article introducing new rules is a sortie in that war.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 61: May 1982

part 1/2

84 pages

In this issue:

Dragon Rumbles: Oh dear. SPI is in trouble. TSR is buying them out. Jake also comments on the purchase of AMAZING magazine. Looks like they're expanding their properties in more ways than one. But can they make any profit out of these, or will it just be throwing good money after bad? I'm sure we'll get more news on this as it happens.

Out on a limb: A letter on Spellbinders by a rival manufacturer, refuting both their originality and their profitability. Which sucks a little. Not every experiment can be a success.
A letter commenting on Jake's KILLER editorials. Yeah. People ought to try and avoid doing things that give roleplaying a bad name, particularly when they involve bystanders. Avoiding the worried parent brigade is a good idea.
Another letter engaging in archery quibbles, and asking for a full book devoted to weapons and optional weapon rules. Eeek. Well, I suppose it'll make some people happy.
A letter asking all those people who dislike high level play, if the game wasn't intended for it, why did they give rules for it in the first place? What's wrong with playing the game until you become a god?
A letter of generalized praise, apart from a few more stupid archery quibbles.
A letter griping about the new cleric spells len gave us in issue 58, saying that many of them are useless to adventurers. Len quite rightly rebutts this. Not all clerics are adventurers, and even the ones that are won't neccacarily want to memorize all combat spells, all the time. Some players have in-game romances between characters and stuff, y'know, actual roleplaying.

From the sorcerors scroll: Gary moves on to illusionist cantrips. This is considerably shorter than the wizard one, as illusionist spells are more versatile, but less useful in a lot of ways. This is pretty much as you'd expect it to be. I think we've exhausted this avenue of expansion for now.

Giants in the earth: This month's characters with percentile ability scores where they shouldn't be are C.J Cutliffe Hyne's Deucalion, John Norman's Tarl Cabot, and Charles R Saunders' Dossouye. Nothing unusual here either.

Without any weapons: Ha. Someone's unhappy with the way unarmed combat is so much more complex than armed, for less effect. So they're trying to streamline it. But it's still way more complex, especially if you don't precalculate all these modifiers. Most adventurers'll still just go for the kill, even if it might be more advantageous to subdue the enemy. That wasn't much help.

Or with a weird one: And here's the other side of the coin. Funny foreign weaponry. Tiger claws, Boomerangs, bullwhips (which paladins are forbidden to use ), caltrops. The mancatcher! ( now that's a far more efficient way of subduing an enemy than unarmed combat.) We'll be seeing quite a few of these again in official supplements. There is a certain amount of special effects creep here, but thankfully damage creep has been avoided. It would be bad for verisimilitude if all the indigenous cultures had better weaponry than the european analogues. (although if you're playing D&D, that should be the least of your worries) I'm sure some of you had lots of fun with these little babies.

The gnomish point of view: And so we reach the last of the common PC races. Quite a bit of attention is put on their tendency to be practical jokers. This may not have been the wisest decision, in hindsight. They also hate kobolds. Apart from that, they do seem to struggle to find a strong identity, having a bit of elves nature love, dwarves skill at crafting and underground stuff, and halflings sneakiness and love of community and food. They are pretty adaptable little creatures. But that's not good enough to get them in the A list, is it. You need a proper archetype. They should have given this to Ed instead of Roger. He'd (make a plan and he'd follow through, that's what Edward Greenwood would do) have figured something out.

The gods of the gnomes: And after the racial description, come the extra gods. Baervan wildwanderer, Sejolan earthcaller, Flandal Steelskin, All faced up against the crawler below, Urdlen. Well, the gnome deities are considerably more interesting than the halfling ones anyway, with their spread of portfolios, companions, and rather distinctive evil god. They certainly serve to flesh out what gnomes are and the ingredients that go into making them better than the previous article did. But will people take in that implied setting stuff? Hard to say. Probably not enough, considering the way they've been treated in 3rd and 4th edition. Which is a shame, really.

 

[Hussar]

Dragon Issue 60: April 1982...
Flight of the boodles: Another complete little game. While humorous in its visuals, this is a perfectly playable little game for one or two players. Yet another fun thing to try out if I get the chance.

I think this is the first issue I remember reading. A friend of mine bought it. I remember the name of that game, but, I cannot for the life of me remember what it was about.

Wow. I would have been 10 years old. Good gawd I feel old now.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 61: May 1982

part 2/2

Quest for the midas orb: The third place module in the IDDC competition is only a 10 pager. Another location based adventure, this is actually fairly nice as adventures from that period go, with only a couple of arbitrary screwage attacks and boss monsters way above the average challenge rating. And the screwage is predictable enough that you could probably work out how to avoid it. In any case, the writing style is quite good. All in all, I quite enjoyed reading it, and wouldn't mind using it.

Dragon's bestiary: Firetails are unpredictable little snaky things from the elemental plane. They could be friendly, or they could curse you and burn your stuff up. Best to banish them home to be sure.
Umbrae are shadows that attack your shadow. To beat them, you'll have to get used to the idea of attacking them with your own shadow. Or just turn the lights out, so you don't have a shadow for them to attack. Just don't mistake them for undead shadows.
Light worms take the hypnotic legends of snakes and take them literally, as they generate glowing mesmerizing patterns of light.
Tybor are exeedingly badass magical birds that have quite a bit in common with ki-rin, of all things. You probably don't want to provoke them.

Monster cards: Another innovation that'll show up quite a few times through the years. Condense monster stats onto little cards, and it can speed up play quite a bit. Buy them now! Get all the sets! Speed up the time when collectible card games will become a genre in their own right, and play a big part in RPG's mid-90's decline. Or something. I don't really have much of an opinion on this one.

Rules for aging in Ringside: My god, an article for this after all this time. And not by the original author either. I'm vaguely surprised. As you might expect from rules for aging, this is pretty brutal stuff, that'll take all but the best fighters out son after they hit 30. Which is realistic, I guess, but depressing. Hey, it's only a game. At least you can start a new character, which is more than you can say for real life.

Jo-ga-oh: Ooh. Native american myths. Fae/ nature spirit analogues get everywhere, don't they. Only the names and specific powers and taboos change. These are some of the more benevolent examples of this group, and will only be a problem if you provoke them. Of course if your adventurers are foreigners who just blunder in killing things and taking stuff, they deserve what they get.

Special knowledge and a bureau for infiltrators: Gary gives us a new class and skills for Top Secret. Do you want to go into deep cover and spend months or years trying to get close to your enemies so they can be taken. This is the bureau for you then. They might not play well with a regular group, unless they're actually an agent from another country in deep cover amongst them. Pretty solid stuff ruleswise. Whether it's actually good for making the game more fun, I'm not so sure.

The dragon's augury: Call of Cthulhu gets a pretty negative review. There are substantial flaws and holes in the rules, and the setting book just sucks. Interesting. While not quite an outright slating, this is definitely a lot harsher than most reviews in this magazine. I get the impression the reviewer is big lovecraft fan, and is judging things on that basis. They definitely don't know the game'll go on far longer than most of the things appearing here.
Hitlers war is, you've guessed it, another WWII wargame. The reviewer compares it quite heavily to third reich. But it is a somewhat shorter and more tactically zoomed out game than that one. Still, it seems to be worth it's price, with several different levels of complexity to choose from, depending on how long you want to play.

Off the shelf has a particularly high quotient of genuinely famous authors this month: Fall into darkness by Nicholas Yermakov Berkley puts a russian spin on the humans in space trope, which puts both american and russian tropes and politics into relief.
The deadliest show in town by Mike McQuay is another futuristic detective novel.
The claw of the conciliator by Gene Wolfe is another time and space spanning epic in the new sun series.
The restaraunt at the end of the universe by Douglas Adams is immediately recognized as an absolute classic, even more entertaining than the first book in this reviewers opinion. But I think most of you already have your own opinions on Mr Adams' work, so you don't need telling that.
The book of philip jose farmer is a well done compilation of his stories, with introductions to the stories, plus several new ones, and a great cover. Snap it up before it goes out of print.
Durandal by Harold lamb is a pseudohistorical epic, telling the story of what happened to Roland's sword after he died. Much bloodyness and intrigue happens.
Beneath an opal moon by Eric van Lustbader is as predictably unpredictable and full of depth as most of his work.

What's new is contracturaly obliged to put off sex in D&D for another month while they tackle actual new games. Incidentally, did Ed Greenwood and Bryce Knorr really look anything like that? Wormy gets three whole pages, plus a cameo in what's new. Pretty decent.

One of the less interesting issues of this period. Apart from the gnomes and the reviews, not much has stuck in my mind. They can definitely do better than this.

 

[(un)reason]

Dragon Issue 62: June 1982

part 1/2

84 pages Another birthday issue, more stuff on dragons old and new. Plus regular features, new games, and a certain amount of recycled ideas. Hey, Originality aint easy. They need something to go between the big ideas.

In this issue:

Dragon rumbles: Ooh. We have the results from their recent survey in. 95% male, average age of 16 and a half, no great surprises there. What is more interesting is how small the proportion of games are that play using the rules as written. They really ought to do something about that.

Out on a limb: A letter praising the second best of, and asking for more classes, as they're getting bored with playing the same old bunch. Kim responds by saying that the current game is not imbalanced, and so doesn't need any more classes, (ha) so they want to keep any further ones they introduce strictly optional.
A letter engaging in some eyerolling at the science article in issue 60, saying such over literal application of real world physics shouldn't be used in a game.

As ever in anniversary issues, they put dragon related stuff in. This time, that is three new dragon types. Faerie dragons are the same type that made it into future editions, with euphoria gas, and quite considerable spell-casting abilities. Grey and steel dragons, on the other hand, are not. A unique named pair of twins, they are opposites in terms of behaviour in nearly every way. But curiously enough, they're not hugely powerful. Interesting. They'd certainly make a good mid-level plot for your players to deal with.

Bazaar of the bizarre: Dragonscale armour. Harvesting body parts for magical components. What a lucrative trade. And dragons are one of the biggest monsters so of course they get special attention here. You'd think the results would be more powerful, given how hard it is to get hold of. And indeed, later versions of it would be. I'm curious as to why roger made it so weak and hard to make. Rather disappointing, really.

Gangbusters: Designers notes on one of the less well remembered games of that era. The pulp crimehunting game which takes the cops and robbers analogy so often used to describe RPG's to its logical conclusion, with rules for public opinion, finance, investigation, and fast and furious action. Or so they say. Did it flop deservedly, or simply because both the pulp era and non-supernatural games tend not to sell very well? I wonder if we'll see any more articles on it in here?

From the sorceror's scroll: Spell books! An important item for every wizard (they'd be impotent without it ) Gary fills in a load more of D&D's implied setting. What they look like, (chunky) how much they cost (loads) How much spell casters charge to cast spells for hire (again, loads). Becoming a wizard is not cheap or easy, and with these costs, they could never be common. You'd have to do quite a bit of monkeying around to get a genuinely high fantasy game out of D&D as written at this point.

Pages from the mages: Well well. Looks like the start of another classic series, one of those that went a long way towards cementing Elminsters place in the D&D mythology. We get several new spells, including nulathoes ninimen, (which I'm sure some people have been wondering about for a good 2 and a half years now) but that's not as important as the tons of weird little details he puts in, from histories of the wizards that made the spellbooks, to the ingredients used to make the ink that inscribes the spells. This really is rather fascinating, as no-one else is writing anything like this stuff. He seems to be capturing the tolkienesque spirit of putting details on everything from languages to cooking as part of his worldbuilding, far batter than fantasy certain novels that just imitate the obvious tropes of the LotR and completely miss the point. This is indeed the kind of article that would change a young person's perspective on gaming and I look forward to seeing more in the series.

Scribes? Again?! Jesus H, what is with these people? Scribes are not interesting. Oh well, I guess even Ed has his off articles. We really do not need to know exactly how noncombatant NPC classes earn their xp in this much detail. It does not make our world richer, as the players will never get to see it.

Sage advice is also focussing upon spellcasting this month. The answers are exceedingly verbose as well. Hopefully I can compress them without losing too much:
Can clone restore you to life. How many times can a character be cloned. (As long as the tissue sample was taken while you were alive. Remember, the clone only has the memories from when the sample was taken. Whether it's actually you or not is a complicated debate for metaphysicians. You can make lots of clones, but bad things tend to happen, as they go insane and try to kill you and each other. Someone ought to work on an upgraded version of the spell. )
Why can you teleport into gas or liquid but not solids. Can you teleport your weapon into another creature (because gasses and liquids can displace easily. Solids cant, so kablooey stuff happens. No, you can't dilliberately teleport items into others, because the spell isn't that precise. )
Affect normal fires doesn't seem to make sense if you use it to try and increase blazes brighter than a torch. (nope, you can't. It just isn't strong enough to make them brighter than that. )
What happens if you bring an object enchanted with continual light into an area of magical darkness? ( they cancel each other out as long as they are in the same area, then both come into play again after moving out. You need to cast the opposing spell directly at the other one to cancel it permanently.
Can you talk while Held (no. )
If you're energy drained and get back the experience, can restoration restore you to an even higher level (no)

 

[Hussar]

Dragon rumbles: Ooh. We have the results from their recent survey in. 95% male, average age of 16 and a half, no great surprises there. What is more interesting is how small the proportion of games are that play using the rules as written. They really ought to do something about that.

Well heh.

Gangbusters: Designers notes on one of the less well remembered games of that era. The pulp crimehunting game which takes the cops and robbers analogy so often used to describe RPG's to its logical conclusion, with rules for public opinion, finance, investigation, and fast and furious action. Or so they say. Did it flop deservedly, or simply because both the pulp era and non-supernatural games tend not to sell very well? I wonder if we'll see any more articles on it in here?

Played this and absolutely loved it. Kept playing a reporter. Had loads of fun with it.

 

[el-remmen]

Ooh. We have the results from their recent survey in. 95% male, average age of 16 and a half, no great surprises there.

1982, right? So those 16 year olds are now 42 or so?

I wonder what the average age is now. . .

 

[Orius]

Pages from the mages: Well well. Looks like the start of another classic series, one of those that went a long way towards cementing Elminsters place in the D&D mythology. We get several new spells, including nulathoes ninimen, (which I'm sure some people have been wondering about for a good 2 and a half years now) but that's not as important as the tons of weird little details he puts in, from histories of the wizards that made the spellbooks, to the ingredients used to make the ink that inscribes the spells. This really is rather fascinating, as no-one else is writing anything like this stuff.

Yeah, Greenwood really has a flair for writing the game-related stuff. I have the 2e splat Pages from the Mages (which probably got it's start from the material in this article), and his descriptions and histories of the various spellbooks is very good. I know later 2e submissions for Dragon copied this style, some doing it better than others, and some people trying to flesh out Greyhawk with unique spellbooks. One of these days, I want to go back to the stuff on the ink, and use it as a basis for scroll-writing components.