Dragon Reflections #32

TSR Periodicals published The Dragon Issue 32 in December 1979. It is 56 pages long and has a cover price of $2.50. In this issue, we have goblin/insect hybrids, the winner of the International Dungeon Design Contest, and a new monster from Ed Greenwood!

Editor Tim Kask welcomes a new staff member to the team, Corey Koebernick, who later worked on Top Secret and also married Jean Wells. In general, Kask sounds upbeat and excited about the prospects of the magazine in the coming year. It is hard to believe he will be gone in a few months.

This issue contains the winning entry of the International Dungeon Design Contest, which they launched a while back. Titled "The Fell Pass," it was written by Karl Merris, who appears to have published little else in the RPG industry. This adventure is a 72-room cavern crawl done in a monster hotel style, with djinn living next to manticores living next werewolves, etc. It looks like a bit of a grind but contains a few good ideas, such as a magical stairway that takes you to a pocket plane where an ancient one tells you a secret in return for a sacrifice.

There is a major feature called "The Druid in Fact and Fantasy" by William Fawcett, who wrote an eclectic bunch of pieces for Dragon, often regarding military matters. This article is excellent. The research is solid, the writing is interesting, and Fawcett includes a bunch of new mechanics (such as abilities and magic items) derived from the lore.

Let's take a look at the regular features. In "Sorcerer's Scroll," Gygax responds to fan demand for material about adventuring on the other planes of existence. The article gives an overview of TSR's efforts to date to codify the multiverse, and it comes down to lots of plans made, but few products delivered. You could argue that TSR did not address the planes adequately until 1994's Planescape.

In "Leomund's Tiny Hut," Lakofka introduces several new monsters, the product of crossing insects with goblinoids. So we have the scorpiorc (scorpion/orc), the koasp (kobold/goblin), the woblin (wasp/goblin), and so on. I like these a lot! They are well described and include useful statistics. I'm inclined to use them for something in the future.

The "Dragon's Bestiary" has a new monster by Ed Greenwood - meet the crawling claw! These small undead creatures have featured in several editions of the game, including 5E. Very cool monsters that I've made a lot of use of over the years.

In Sage Advice, Jean Wells starts the column with a light-hearted rant about whether dwarven women have beards or not. Gygax says yes, Jean says no, and lots of folks have strong opinions on the matter. All good fun, as are the questions in this month's column, including, "I am having a romance with a god, but he won't have anything to do with me until I divorce my present husband. How do I go about divorcing my husband?" Jean wryly comments that she is the "Dear Abby" of D&D.

As always, there are several rule variants in this issue. "Poisons from AA to XX" presents a comprehensive poison system for D&D that feels too complicated to me. "Aquatic Encounters with Megaflora" is a great title that deserved a better article. "Some Spells for the Very Smart Sorcerer" ports some D&D spells over to Steve Jackson's Wizard board game (which later morphed into The Fantasy Trip and then GURPs), while "The Traveller Politician" adds a new career to the popular sci-fi RPG. Finally, "WRG Rules Modifications: General Rules Armor & Infantry 1925-80" gives some variants to the successful miniatures rules from the Wargames Research Group.

This issue includes several reviews. Samurai by Heritage Models "nicely approaches the situation in the historical Japan of this time." Middle Sea by Fantasy Games Unlimited does an "excellent job of representing... economics, warfare, and diplomacy in the Mediterranean world" during the Crusades. Ironclad by Yaquinto Games is "one of the best releases of the year," while the self-published Sandlot Football is "recommend... to all gamers who enjoy an occasional sports-oriented game for a change of pace."

Finally, Michael Kluevar shares a sequel to last month's article on armor from Asia; this one is called, "Weapons of the Far East." The research seems top shelf, and it's a shame he didn't include some stats and so transform it into a proper D&D feature.

And that wraps up the issue. It was strong overall, with the best articles coming from Greenwood and Lakofka. Next month, we have a new regular feature about computer gaming, Gary Gygax defends the D&D magic system, and Roger E. Moore makes his debut!

 

[talien]

It was a joke! Someone wrote in to Dragon pointing out that Tolkien never mentioned female Dwarfs, even though at least some time was spent with them. Therefore, that MUST mean that nobody noticed them because they had beards! The next several issues printed replies and rebuttles, and the whole thing took on a life of its own.

The argument blew up over a quote (you can see more here Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ: Story Internal Discussions: Creatures and Characters) that stated non-dwarves "couldn't tell males from females apart." Tolkien didn't specifically say dwarf women had beards, but he did say that all dwarf men had beards. And therefore, if you can't tell them apart...

This subsequently turned into a battle over interpretation of Tolkien-ism vs. D&D; the hobby had a love/hate relationship with Tolkien's works and their enormous influence on fantasy. A lot of the argument revolved around how much you cared what Tolkien thought about dwarves and whether or not D&D was "true to its roots" (ignoring that Tolkien's works were not D&D's only or even primary influence). It went on for several issues after this one in the letters column.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I don't think we'll ever have a real answer on whether dwarven women have beards or not in D&D, since it goes back and forth from edition to edition and even book to book.

In the pro-beard camp, there's iconic Elwita, from the Slavers' series:

In the con-beard camp, there's the very entry for "Dwarf" in 5e:

I generally leave it up to the player at this point. If they want to play a beard dwarf woman, go for it. If not, also go for it.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

The argument blew up over a quote (you can see more here Tolkien Newsgroups FAQ: Story Internal Discussions: Creatures and Characters) that stated non-dwarves "couldn't tell males from females apart." Tolkien didn't specifically say dwarf women had beards, but he did say that all dwarf men had beards. And therefore, if you can't tell them apart...

This subsequently turned into a battle over interpretation of Tolkien-ism vs. D&D; the hobby had a love/hate relationship with Tolkien's works and their enormous influence on fantasy. A lot of the argument revolved around how much you cared what Tolkien thought about dwarves and whether or not D&D was "true to its roots" (ignoring that Tolkien's works were not D&D's only or even primary influence). It went on for several issues after this one in the letters column.

Thanks for the correction. I was going from memory and forgot about the quote.

 

[Kannik]

It certainly felt more solid than some of the articles of that nature that I've seen. However, I've no expertise in that field, so I believe you if you tell me it is lacking.

I can't speak for sure what may have been known (or not) to scholars in '79, but given that The Art of War was written sometime in the 5th century BCE and kung fu films were already influencing/creating the general view of the amazing prowess of "oriental martial arts," it seems unlikely to me that any detailed research could have led to such an odd view of Chinese military history and its weapons. Especially the unbalanced and unwieldy assertion -- both from the "martial arts expertise" view but even more so that if you've been using fighting implements since 2200 BCE and amassing armies, led by generals for which there were exams in order to earn your rank, it is almost unfathomable that someone along the way wouldn't have redesigned them to be greatly functional and effective.

Telling I think is the bibliography at the end of the article -- of the 11 works noted, only 3 are not Japanese-specific, and of those three, one also covers guns and other items while the remaining two are written by art historians and consist mostly of either photographs/illustrations with text describing their origin, but little else.

At any rate, this is not meant as a slight to you on your review of the magazine! More about my shocked reaction from reading the article.