Dragon Reflections #103

TSR Inc. published Dragon #103 in November 1985. It is 100 pages long and has a cover price of $3.00. This issue features errata, gnomes, and the future of AD&D!

The cover, titled “Birth of the Blues,” is by Robert Pritchard. Interior artists include Larry Elmore, Bob Maurus, Roger Raupp, Tom Centola, the Marvel Bullpen, David Trampier, Ted Goff, and Joseph Pillsbury.

This month’s special attraction is “Unearthed Arcana additions and corrections.” Editor Kim Mohan notes that, though TSR spent months producing Unearthed Arcana, it took readers “only a fraction of that time” to uncover a multitude of errors. What follows are 6 pages of errata, including revisions to many key tables. The book clearly lacked adequate editing and playtesting.

In “The future of the game,” Gary Gygax describes what the planned Second Edition of AD&D will be like. The intention is to combine the Monster Manuals I and II, as well as the Fiend Folio, into a single volume with new illustrations, organisation, and layout. In a similar manner, the Player’s Handbook, Unearthed Arcana, and Oriental Adventures will also be combined, with a couple of new subclasses added (the mystic, savant, and jester). The Dungeon Masters Guide will be heavily reorganized, and Deities & Demigods (retitled Legends & Lore) will be revised to focus less on statistics and more on the worship of each god. But even as this article was published, Gygax was being sidelined within TSR and would be gone completely within a year. The Second Edition would finally be published, four years later, under the leadership of Zeb Cook.

“All about Krynn’s gnomes” finishes up Roger E. Moore’s series on the demi-humans of Dragonlance. The gnomes were originally humans serving Reorx, the divine creator. They misused their crafting skills, and so the god cursed them, reducing their stature and making them obsessed with tinkering, but unable to pursue a higher purpose. Their society is highly industrialised but also absurdly bureaucratic, with the gnomes hyper-curious yet focused on trivia. I guess the “tinker gnome” archetype, which came to dominate how the game presents the race, started in Krynn.

“A dozen domestic dogs” by Stephen Inniss presents more gaming detail on these most ancient and ubiquitous of pets. He divides them into 12 categories, based on size (Very small, Small, Medium, Large) and type (Fighter, Normal, and Runner). For example, a terrier is a very small fighter, while a greyhound is a medium runner. Otherwise, the dogs differ only slightly in movement, hit points and damage. Such articles reflect the simulationist tendency then in vogue, but it is a lot of detail for a negligible impact on the game.

“The Centaur Papers” by Stephen Inniss and Kelly Adams has an unusual history. Inniss and Adams separately submitted articles on the topic, so Mohan asked for permission to combine them into one. The result is 12 pages long and covers everything from social organisation through to personal grooming. I found it less compelling than the Moore/Greenwood articles on similar topics, but I did appreciate the information on using them as player characters.

“The Wages of Stress” is a short story by Christopher Gilbert. In a near-future society, the government punishes those who cause stress and compensates those who suffer from it. Hale Rothemon figures out how to exploit the system, but things quickly spiral out of his control. It’s an intriguing premise with strong pacing and good characterisation. Gilbert is a psychologist who published a few short stories in the 80s.

“The Role of Books” by John C. Bunnell reviews the latest in speculative fiction:

• The Silver Crown by Joel Rosenberg is "entertaining reading."
• The Song of Mavin Manyshaped / The Flight of Mavin Manyshaped by Sheri S. Tepper are "soundly plotted though rather brief."
• The Secret Country by Pamela C. Dean is "great fun and just plausible enough to be thought-provoking."
• Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart is "an unforgettable reading experience."
• Dragons of Spring Dawning by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman should "at last satisfy the old demands for something to read after the Ring books."
• Magic in Ithkar, edited by Andre Norton and Robert Adams, fails as a shared-world anthology because the stories "do not truly mesh into a single setting."
• The Gadget Factor by Sandy Landsman is "a fascinating tale about computer games and scientific accidents."

Finally, the ARES Section returns, presenting about a dozen pages of science-fiction and superhero gaming material. It includes four articles:

• "Of Nobbles and Men" by Paul Vernon brings galactic ranchers to Traveller.
• "The Saurians" by Jeffrey Bouley is a new race for Star Frontiers.
• "Tanks Again!" by Alex Curylo presents more vehicles for Star Frontiers.
• "The Marvel-Phile" by Jeff Grubb shares Marvel Super Heroes stats for Armadillo, Count Nefaria, and Hyperion.

And that’s a wrap! It was a rather unsatisfying issue, though I did enjoy reading about Gygax’s plans for the game. Next month, we have the Ochre Jelly, thieves, and a Marvel Super Heroes module!

 

[jolt]

I remember much of this issue. An EGG 2E would probably feature even more overpowered classes balanced by crippling roleplay restrictions. One thing I find remarkable about Gygaxian game design is how much of it is punitive, meant to push you towards playing the “right way” i.e. the Gygax way. Sure he would let you play a non-human or a wizard, but he would use lots of fiddly details and restrictions to make you regret it, until you relent and play the Conan or Fafhrd type of macho warriors that got EGG excited.

Although the rules of 1E encouraged you to play a magic-user. Most of the big name PC's, including Gygax's Mordenkainen, were magic-users. In the long run, only the thief advances faster than the MU with the fighters being the slowest and gaining almost nothing for it. Also, considering that even the most advanced modules didn't go past levels 10-14, there was little reason not to play a multiclassed non human.

 

[Flying Toaster]

I remember reading about the Bohemian Earspoon (and the Holy Water Sprinkler) and being pretty mystified at around age 11. I guess I kinda pictured a polearm with a sharp and vaguely spoon-shaped blade, But then again, I don't recall a PC ever equipping a polearm back in my campaigns.

As a kid I had fun reading about all of the crazy polearms, but they definitely raised a lot of questions not easily answered in a world before the Internet. Many of the names were in French, or referred to places like Bohemia or Lucerne. How does anybody in Oerth know about Earth? Or is it like a Hollywood sword & sandal epic, where we just understand that the American English we hear stands in for Ancient Greek?

Even then I assumed that some of the polearm names were examples of weird medieval military humor. An ordinary earspoon was a commonplace ear cleaning tool, so maybe the polearm name was a boast about how Bohemians were so rugged they used polearms to dig out earwax. Or maybe it was actually a wartime dig at Bohemians by their enemies, like “Dutch courage” - Bohemians are so crazy or stupid that they used polearms to dig out earwax. Without a specific reference from history, it is hard to say.

PCs in our AD&D games rarely used polearms, tridents, or even spears very much, because we tended to worry about which weapons could be used in the confines of dungeon corridors and rooms. Most people just wanted to use swords anyway. I seem to recall playing a fighter who used a fauchard-fork for its special ability to hamper opponents. Polearms with those special abilities to trip or dismount opponents might have seen more use if the rules had focused more on weapon reach and/or mounted combat, which I always thought was a bit of a strange omission for a game that evolved from a medieval combat simulator.

 

[Flying Toaster]

It is actually only very lightly in there affecting anything under the rules now. Skeletons and bludgeoning vulnerability. Rakshasa vulnerable to piercing for the old blessed holy crossbow bolts one shot thing and treants resisting bludgeoning and piercing leaving them open to slashing axes (and swords). It is hard to find other examples where it actually matters whether you use a bludgeoning, slashing, or piercing weapon. AD&D and Basic had the cleric bludgeoning only, but in 3e and beyond that went to simple weapons so spears and daggers were fine. I remember 1e zombies having a thing about piercing only doing 1 point of damage but that was dropped from 3e and beyond.

I guess I was thinking about how magic spell damage is split into cold, fire, radiant, etc. That was an element of the AD&D rules, but the way it was handled was not quite so systematic as it is in 5E.

 

[Flying Toaster]

I experimented a couple of times as a DM with allowing cleric PCs and NPCs to use whatever weapon(s) their deities used. The main problem with that was that a lot of deities had either one weapon only, or none at all, so a lot of weapon slots would go unused. Don't think I ever quite worked up the system for that....

I often played clerics and druids because I knew we needed a combat medic, but nobody else wanted to play that role. I would flavor my clerics by choosing a deity from one of the L&L pantheons, usually Norse, and if possible I would use their favored weapon.

Sometimes I could talk the DM into letting me use a non-standard weapon, with special dispensation to add a single level of UA weapon proficiency (+1 to hit / +2 damage). The result was a sort of Norse war priest. My cleric of Freya used a standard mace, but when I played clerics of Thor and Odin I used war hammer and spear respectively. I convinced the DM to allow this by pointing out that those weapons were still a bit lackluster even with a specialization bonus.

 

[Von Ether]

Although the rules of 1E encouraged you to play a magic-user. Most of the big name PC's, including Gygax's Mordenkainen, were magic-users. In the long run, only the thief advances faster than the MU with the fighters being the slowest and gaining almost nothing for it. Also, considering that even the most advanced modules didn't go past levels 10-14, there was little reason not to play a multiclassed non human.

The longest AD&D game I was in had a common joke about how helpless humans were because all the rest of the non-humans had to rescue this human village or that human village.

 

[Flying Toaster]

In B/X they both do equivalent d6 damage for clerics but cannot be thrown.

In 1e it does d4+1 or d4 damage (against size large) but it can also be thrown effectively.

When our group graduated from B/X to AD&D, I noticed lots of minor rule differences in things like hit dice or damage done by various weapons, spells, and magic items. Some of the numbers got bigger, like fighter HD going up from d8 to d10. But other numbers got smaller, so some options were actually worse in AD&D than in B/X. I was surprised to find that damage from war hammers, crossbows, and IIRC the Magic Missile spell decreased in AD&D.

 

[Flying Toaster]

The longest AD&D game I was in had a common joke about how helpless humans were because all the rest of the non-humans had to rescue this human village or that human village.

See also:

All of the episodes of Star Trek TOS in which Spock saves the day with his Vulcan superpowers, such as super strength or magical green “half breed” blood. Clearly every Starfleet ship needs its very own Vulcan as part of a standard crew complement!

TNG recycled this plot device by using the android Data for the same purpose.

 

[Voadam]

This month’s special attraction is “Unearthed Arcana additions and corrections.” Editor Kim Mohan notes that, though TSR spent months producing Unearthed Arcana, it took readers “only a fraction of that time” to uncover a multitude of errors. What follows are 6 pages of errata, including revisions to many key tables. The book clearly lacked adequate editing and playtesting.

Anything big here in the errata?

 

[David Howery]

I would flavor my clerics by choosing a deity from one of the L&L pantheons, usually Norse, and if possible I would use their favored weapon.

way back in my earliest D&D days, our guides to the gods was the D&D volume (I have the 'rare' one with the Cthulhu and Elric entries) and the WoG deities published in Dragon. Before the latter ones appeared, the PCs in our groups worshipped a wide variety of gods from the first one. But at that time, we were sticking to the rules about 'no edged weapons', so it didn't matter much. It was years later when I was a DM for our group most of the time that I tried experimenting with the rules on that...