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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9812966" data-attributes="member: 7052563">This was a major issue that definitely got lots of attention from my junior high school AD&D group, although we were reading it a couple of years later.  It was one of a number of back issues I bought either from a hobby shop or by direct order from TSR.  The paper sculpture cover was indeed very distinctive.  I had forgotten that this issue was the “world premiere” for Gord of Greyhawk.  I bought and read the first two Gord novels, and enjoyed them well enough at the time, although in retrospect the sheer novelty of reading fiction by “the man himself” was probably doing a lot of the heavy lifting.  By most accounts they do not hold up well today, even by the standards of 1980’s fantasy literature.  I did not learn until years later that in his final Gord novel EGG would blow up the whole world of Greyhawk in a fit of pique related to his messy ouster from TSR.  Knowing what we now know about his controlling tendencies, I suppose it is not too surprising.  This August issue would have been produced while Gygax was in the thick of his battle to take TSR back from the Blume brothers after years of financial mismanagement, but by October he would himself lose control to Lorraine Williams.  So no one outside of TSR would have realized it at the time, but this issue, the UA hardback, and Temple of Elemental Evil would have been some of EGG’s last creative contributions to D&D.  News travelled slowly back then, so my friends and I did not even hear that Gygax was out until maybe 1987 or so.Several years before I got my own copy of this issue, I already knew about “The City Beyond the Gate” from a friend who was quite enthusiastic about it.  He was two years older than me and had amassed an impressive hoard of 1980’s RPG material, including Star Frontiers, Gamma World, WFRP 1E, and an early printing of Deities and Demigods complete with the Lovecraft and Moorcock chapters (those Erol Otus drawings of Cthulhu beings are really something else... <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😵‍💫" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f635-1f4ab.png" title="Face with spiral eyes    :face_with_spiral_eyes:" data-shortname=":face_with_spiral_eyes:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />).  My interest in D&D began by browsing his collection, especially the AD&D monster card sets.  Our attempt to play the module fell a bit flat.  He ran it as DM for me and his younger brother (my age), who was a casual player at best who mostly played fighters because they were easy to run and had no alignment restrictions (unlike most AD&D classes...).  In retrospect, for middle school kids we were actually not that bad at understanding the tactical combat aspects of AD&D, but although we were never “murder hobos” we often struggled with puzzles, traps, and peaceful NPC interactions.  Trying to get the Mace of St. Cuthbert out of the museum without killing anyone or getting arrested was a bit beyond our ken. Years later I began reading about real medieval history and lore, and was fascinated by how different it all was from the boiled-down second or third hand ideas found in the pulp authors of Appendix N, the 1980’s fantasy lit boom, and of course D&D itself and all of the TTRPGs and CRPGs that followed in its wake.  I was amused to learn that EGG’s St. Cuthbert, a minor demigod of the Greyhawk pantheon, was obviously inspired by a very real St. Cuthbert, a 7th c. monk, bishop, and hermit from the north of England who was later canonized.  Since the fictional D&D Cuthbert bears little if any resemblance to the Anglo-Saxon churchman, Gygax must have read something about him and just cribbed the name (as did we all - the LOTR appendices were great when you needed a quick dwarf or elf name!).  I have visited the V&A several times over the years, so it was funny to think of a museum primarily devoted to applied arts and design holding in its collection a medieval weapon that is really a holy undead-smiting artifact from another world.I had forgotten that the druid / ranger article appeared in this issue, or that Frank Mentzer wrote it.  IIRC it was reprinted in one of the Best of Dragon compilations, and it was very popular with my junior high AD&D group.  We played lots of druid /rangers and druid / ranger / mages (an obvious subclass counterpart to the official cleric / fighter / mage).  We tried to follow the spirit of the rules if not always the letter, because even as teens we could see that the official rules were a mess.  I was glad to see that the 2E rules allowed druids to have any partially Neutral alignment (NG, NE, LN, CN), which opened up lots of interesting possibilities, including NE “dark druids” corrupting nature in the name of pure EEE-vil (<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😈" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f608.png" title="Smiling face with horns    :smiling_imp:" data-shortname=":smiling_imp:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />).  We used alignment as a roleplaying opportunity or adventure hook, never as a tool for DMs to control and punish players who just wanted to have fun.Although the Forgotten Realms never held much appeal for me, I always enjoyed Ed Greenwood’s Dragon articles, including Pages From the Mages.  They helped me think about how to make NPCs come to life, and especially about how to make spell books and magic items more... magical.  Real medieval manuscripts have names, histories, and provenance just like these spell books, so I suspect Greenwood must have done some historical research to help bring his creations to life.PS: I was never a big comics fan, so the Marvel Supers article on the Guardians of the Galaxy may have been the very first time I ever heard of them, but it left little impression on me at the time.  Funny to think that three decades later they would play such a big part in a major motion picture franchise.</blockquote>

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