Dragon Reflections #105

TSR Inc. published Dragon #105 in January 1986. It is 100 pages long and has a cover price of $3.00. This issue features invisibility, parallel worlds, and a new AD&D adventure!

The cover, by Robin Wood, depicts a spectacular battle between a wizard and a giant bat. Interior artists include Roger Raupp, the Marvel Bullpen, David Trampier, Ted Goff, A.J. Toos, Joseph Pillsbury, Richard Tomasic, E.B. Wagner, Stephen Hearon, and Larry Elmore.

This month’s special attraction is “Betrayed!”, an AD&D adventure by Jim Bengston for character levels 3-5. Brannod Colnet, the nephew of a prosperous spice trader, was kidnapped by orcs while on a camping trip. The characters are offered a rich reward to retrieve him. It turns out that Brannod is being held in the mountain home of a firbolg named Gador, who is aligned with a rival merchant family. Gador’s trickery and the family intrigue add some interest to this adventure, but many of the individual encounters feel rather flat. This was Bengston’s only RPG publication.

In “Leomund’s Tiny Hut,” Len Lakofka turns his critical eye toward the new subraces introduced in Unearthed Arcana. He finds that many of them (e.g. duergar) are overpowered and suggests some fixes. In an editorial postscript, Kim Mohan explains that the problem arose from an effort to keep the subrace descriptions consistent with earlier depictions of these creatures in various monster books.

“Travel works both ways” by Paul Vernon expands the encounter tables in the Dungeon Masters Guide to include many more NPCs, such as beggars, tinkers, scribes, and messengers. Each new entry includes a capsule description containing some interesting tidbits, though some are overwritten. Vernon authored many RPG articles across various magazines, mostly concerning the depiction of medieval societies.

In “Seeing is believing,” Geoffrey Meissner explores invisibility in depth. He divides the phenomenon into three categories: physical invisibility, mind-control invisibility, and illusory invisibility, and then explains the properties of each. It’s a thoughtful article that includes new spells and a Q&A section. This was Meissner’s only RPG publication.

“The rest of the papers” is a brief follow-up to “The Centaur Papers” in Dragon #103 and includes refinements to the height and weight table, among other trivia. The simulationist tendencies of the era are on full display here.

In “The well-equipped victim,” Ed Greenwood shares a series of treasure tables for 0-level NPCs, such as labourers and farmers. It’s obviously well researched, but only a few of the items would be of much interest to an adventurer.

“A world of difference” by Fraser Sherman suggests introducing parallel worlds to spice up your D&D campaign. He describes a parallel world as another prime-material-style world that sits alongside the player’s home world--similar but different in key areas. The fun comes from changing a few premises in these new worlds and exploring the results. Sherman gives examples such as a flat world, a world where everyone has psionic powers, and a world dominated by technology. It’s also an opportunity to send the characters into other game systems, like Gamma World and Boot Hill. The article is long but contains a great deal of insight. Sherman published several pieces in Dragon and has since published various stories, articles, and books, mostly in the realm of geekdom.

Merle M. Rasmussen returns with another edition of “Spy’s advice,” answering the latest fan questions about Top Secret. Examples include “What is the rate of fire for the .45-caliber M3 submachine gun?” and “Why is high-explosive incendiary ammo more effective against vehicles than armor-piercing incendiary?”

“On the Rocks at Slab’s” is a short story by John Gregory Betancourt. A holy emissary seeks a powerful relic inside a disreputable tavern, and the shifty owner must scramble to hide the truth. This is an entertaining and deftly written comic piece with good pacing and a strong premise. Betancourt went on to publish many short stories and novels.

“The role of books” returns with John C. Bunnell’s reviews of the latest in Fantasy and SciFi literature.

• Deep Wizardry by Diane Duane is about a pair of teenage wizards on an underwater adventure, and “may well be the best fantasy book published in 1985.”
• Liavek by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull presents a shared-world fantasy anthology whose eleven tales “are uniformly excellent.”
• Mustapha and His Wise Dog by Esther M. Friesner is an Arabian Nights-inspired story in an “exceptionally well-crafted world.”
• Children of the Dragon by Rose Estes tells of three children in a dragon-haunted kingdom and is “a welcome surprise.”
• A Gathering of Gargoyles by Meredith Ann Pierce is the second book in a trilogy and is “well above average.”
• Masters of Glass by M. Coleman Easton centres on an intriguing form of magic worked through coloured-glass talismans but feels like “the first draft of a novel.”

This month’s “TSR Profile” features Kim Mohan, Editor-in-Chief of Dragon, as well as assistant editor Pat Price. The latter is the brother of Michael Price, who wrote several Gamma World modules and also edited various D&D books.

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

• “Rites of Passage” by Danny Kretzer initiates you into Gamma World’s Cryptic Alliances.
• “The Marvel-Phile” by Jeff Grubb shares Marvel Superheroes stats for the Serpent Society.
• “Villains & Variants” by John J. Polojac suggests optional rules for Villains & Vigilantes.
• “The Big Guns” by William Wilson Goodson, Jr. has Marvel Superheroes stats for military equipment.
• “Expanding the Frontier” by William Tracy describes exploration in the Star Frontiers universe.

And that’s a wrap! This was a strong issue, with the parallel worlds article my favourite. Next month, we have a plethora of paladins, the laws of magic, and the ranger redefined!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I don't know, 1985 also saw the publication of The Vampire Lestat. It may not be my cup of tea, but I understand there's still a few fans of that one around.

The TV show is getting rave reviews. It'd say Lestat or maybe Queen of the Damned is probably peak Vampire Chronicles, before it starts getting very silly very fast with the Body Thief and especially Memnoch the Devil.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Recreational camping in an AD&D world feels odd to me. I don't know the history of camping, but I have a hard time picturing people doing it for fun before the world got more urbanized and the wilderness was tamed, to say nothing of the orcs and furbolgs.

I have not made a detailed study of the subject, but outdoor leisure activities like hiking and camping became mainstream in developed Western countries only during the 20th century and especially during the mid-century postwar economic boom. Before that you have early nature conservation groups and the first national parks, inspired by the 19th century Romantic movement in art, literature, and music, which prized the restorative powers of nature and the sublime. And yes, all of that was a reaction to increasing industrialization, urbanization, and suburbanization.

In the 19th century most people might take a short walk to see a picturesque sight, but they fully expected to get back to their lodgings well before dark, not to rough it in the deep dark woods. The only exceptions might be a few wild eccentrics who pioneered “alpinism” by climbing snowy mountain peaks without gear, because it had not been invented yet...

But then D&D has always been a cheerful stew of anachronisms: Classical creatures, Medieval weapons and armor, Renaissance intrigue, Gold Rush economies, Rube Goldberg deathtraps and superstitious “primitives” fit for Tarzan or Doc Savage the Man of Bronze, and even the occasional alien, robot, or spaceship. In a high magic setting that has controlled or eliminated many threats, you might actually see richer people trying to get outdoors and enjoy natural (and supernatural) wonders.

While Dragon gets a lot of crap for being a TSR house organ, even at this point, it's wild that Lafolka can say "yeah, this book we just published had a lot of issues." It's great that he felt the freedom to do so and that Mohan still embraced the spirit of fanzines and published this. I have a hard time picturing late-stage White Dwarf, the White Wolf magazine from the 1990s or Dragon+ publishing anything comparable.

I remember seeing a number of reader letters and editorials debating whether or not Dragon was a TSR house organ, and I suppose they deserve some credit for even discussing the issue. Of course AD&D was the 900-lb gorilla of the 1980s TTRPG market, so even a truly independent magazine might well have given that game the lion’s share of coverage.

 

[Flying Toaster]

My junior high school friends and I started playing AD&D intensively around 1986 or so, after cutting our teeth on B/X and BECMI, so we never played the original 1970s “1.0” edition with just the three core books. UA was always part of the game for us, and we never sat down and had a deliberate conversation about what to use or not use, but in effect we mostly used the new spells and magic items while disregarding much of the rest. In retrospect I now realize that the main reasons I always preferred AD&D to B/X were the race/class split and the more plentiful character options, and not anything about the actual rules, which were so much more cumbersome that we disregarded many of them in practice.

Oddly enough I was one of the only people in my group who actually tried to make some use of those character options. Most people settled into always playing fighters, rangers, mages, multi-class elves, or occasionally thieves. I was the only one in my group who ever played a dwarf, gnome, cavalier, paladin, or illusionist, and I often played clerics or druids because no one else really wanted to play the “medic” role. No one ever played a half-orc, valley elf, wild elf, assassin, monk, barbarian, or thief-acrobat, and the only halflings appeared in our early B/X days. I regretted not playing an AD&D halfling archer-type thief when I actually looked at the PHB one day and saw something like (IIRC) “+3 to hit with all missile weapons” .

There was one guy who always played one of three “monster” types: 2E dual-wielding dark elf ranger (no points for guessing that literary archetype...), half-ogre fighter with 19 STR (from a Gygax Dragon article, oddly enough), or Krynn minotaur fighter with 20 STR (even though we mostly played in the Forgotten Realms, and never in Krynn itself!). Yes, we were munchkins, although even we could tell that the barbarian and cavalier were overpowered.

The big problem with the dark elf, grey dwarf, and deep gnome PC options from UA was that the NPC versions from the FF & MM2 had lots of spell-like powers and resistance or immunity to many types of attacks (paralysis, poison, illusions, etc). That is great for making them interesting foes with an eerie fey Underdark flavor and more challenge than the average “humanoid”, but it is hard to balance that with the original PHB races. I wonder what it would be like to run an Underdark campaign with PCs who are all drow, duergar, and svirfneblin. The three are probably reasonably well balanced against each other, so you would not need to nerf the powers quite so much. The PCs are all renegades trying to escape or overthrow the cartoonishly EEE-vil Underdark societies portrayed in the old classic TSR modules, the “Greyhawk Adventure Path” if you will.

 

[RealAlHazred]

In retrospect I now realize that the main reasons I always preferred AD&D to B/X were the race/class split and the more plentiful character options, and not anything about the actual rules, which were so much more cumbersome that we disregarded many of them in practice.

That was one of the great ideas Gavin Norman had with Old School Essentials (originally named B/X Essentials). The Advanced Fantasy version includes all of the AD&D stuff I liked: separate lineage/class, cavaliers and barbarians, and so on, all scaled and balanced with B/X classes in mind. I liked it better as a solution than making new classes for every lineage/class combination I could imagine -- I could imagine a lot and was way too lazy to write them all up!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Man, I loved the half-ogre.

 

[el-remmen]

Man, I loved the half-ogre.

I was really into them for a while and played one called Sluggo in HS.

 

[R_Chance]

That was one of the great ideas Gavin Norman had with Old School Essentials (originally named B/X Essentials). The Advanced Fantasy version includes all of the AD&D stuff I liked: separate lineage/class, cavaliers and barbarians, and so on, all scaled and balanced with B/X classes in mind. I liked it better as a solution than making new classes for every lineage/class combination I could imagine -- I could imagine a lot and was way too lazy to write them all up!

You can get the B/X rules with the AD&D race / class with Dragonslayer by Greg Gillespie as well. It has Cyclopsmen (which shouts half Ogre to me) and a westernized Monk that fits in better with the European esthetic of D&D. It has some of the clunkier bits from early D&D but that's just a homebrew fix away

 

[M.T. Black]

You can get the B/X rules with the AD&D race / class with Dragonslayer by Greg Gillespie as well. It has Cyclopsmen (which shouts half Ogre to me) and a westernized Monk that fits in better with the European esthetic of D&D. It has some of the clunkier bits from early D&D but that's just a homebrew fix away

Tell me more about the westernized Monk??

 

[R_Chance]

Tell me more about the westernized Monk??

They use blunt weapons only, no armor (they get +1 AC bonus per level) or shields and are quarterstaff specialists. Think Friar Tuck without a sword. They can parry / deflect succesful attacks or trip opponents with the quarterstaff. They have a number of special abilities and a lot of the usual requirements of poverty etc. They get Cleric spells and can turn undead starting at level 3. It's a different take on Monks.

 

[Sossij]

Neat.

I have an idea for an adventure at a western-ish Monastery where the Monks are just like "That's what they do they remove themselves from the world and live and work and pray at a monastery" and just have totally separate classes as appropriate based on past life and what they do at the monastery.