TSR Periodicals published The Dragon issue 38 in June 1980. It is 74 pages long and has a cover price of $3.00. In this issue, we have the secret history of Top Secret, a guide to the seven magical planets, and Gary Gygax explaining the concept of good!
Astute readers will notice a change in the organization of the magazine. Throughout its history, The Dragon has experimented with different ways of categorizing the contents table. From this issue on, they have just three sections: "special attractions," "regular columns," and "other features." This three-fold categorization of material remained in place for several years.
Editor Jake Jacquet informs us that TSR Periodicals, the company that publishes The Dragon, is changing its name to Dragon Publishing (which remained a wholly owned subsidiary of TSR, Inc). One reason for the change was distinguishing themselves from TSR Hobbies (also owned by TSR, Inc.), the sister-company that published Dungeons & Dragons. Jacquet says,
This month's special attraction is a 10-page lift-out game called Ringside, and it is a boxing simulator written by TSR co-owner Brian Blume, who also wrote Boot Hill. The game is pretty simple. You move chits about a gridded ring and roll a percentage dice to hit when adjacent. On a success, you secretly select the punch you threw (uppercut, jab, etc.) while your opponent secretly selects the punch they are anticipating. If your opponent guesses correctly, it mutes the effect of the punch. The game had its fans and is currently rated 5.3 by Board Game Geek. It was republished in 1990 as part of the Best of Dragon Magazine Games boxed set.
On to the regular columns. In "Leomund's Tiny Hut," Len Lakofka buffs up dragons with additional magic. Arthur Rahman continues his "Minarian Legends" series in support of Divine Right, this time with a history of Mivior. "Simulation Corner" by John Prados presents a potted history of the Charles S. Roberts Award for excellence in the historical wargaming hobby. This article is a good read, and it taught me a lot about the early wargaming hobby.
"The Electric Eye" is disappointing this month, with Mark Herro publishing annotated screen dumps of the beloved Star Trek and Civil War computer games. I suppose it may have helped inform those who had never played the games before, but it felt lazy. In "Dragon's Bestiary," Kevin Readman gives us the Foliate, which is a flying tentacled monster that resembles a ball of light. It's a mildly interesting concept, though I don't believe anyone ever republished it.
"From the Sorcerer's Scroll" is typically fascinating, as Gary Gygax discusses the meaning of "good" in the D&D game world. He asserts that the game provides "pretty clear definitions" of good and evil. However, he says this is true "nominally" rather than "conceptually" - whatever he means by that! The longer the article goes on, the more relative his concept of good becomes, and perhaps it ultimately demonstrates how hard it is to model morality in games.
"The Dragon's Augury" has a single lengthy review this month, concerning Freedom in The Galaxy from SPI. Reviewer Tony Watson says it is an "impressive game" of "grand scope," and "one of the few of SPI's full-size SF games to really live up to expectations."
The issue includes an eclectic collection of other feature articles. The longest of these is Gardner Fox's "The Cup of Golden Death," the latest Niall of the Far Travels stories. This fiction found a small audience but is a pale shadow of the Conan stories it imitates. In "Tesseracts," Allen Wells describes how to create a tesseract-shaped dungeon.
Merle Rasmussen describes how he created the Top Secret RPG in "The Rasmussen Files." It's an amusing article written in the style of a confidential intelligence report. In "The Seven Magical Planets," Tom Moldvay shows how you can use the ancient idea of planetary correspondences ("as above so below") to add flavor to your campaign.
F.C. MacKnight concludes his series on Lankhmar with a challenging puzzle. This series has mainly been of interest to fans. "It's the little things that count" is a D&D story by Lewis Bryson, describing a short dungeon crawl. These sorts of stories rarely make for good reading, and this one is no exception. Bryson is known for contributing to Ysgarth around this time, a simulationist RPG renowned for its detail and complexity. Rounding things out, "Spelling out a strategy for hostile Magic-Users," by Jon Mattson presents a series of tables for randomly determining the spells used by enemy spellcasters. Mattson was a frequent contributor to The Dragon and later wrote an AD&D adventure for Judges Guild.
And that's a wrap! My favorite articles were "The Seven Magical Planets," which gave me several campaign ideas, and "Simulation Corner," which shared some fascinating history that I didn't know before. The next issue features women in gaming, a Top Secret module, and a new NPC—the Anti-Paladin!
Astute readers will notice a change in the organization of the magazine. Throughout its history, The Dragon has experimented with different ways of categorizing the contents table. From this issue on, they have just three sections: "special attractions," "regular columns," and "other features." This three-fold categorization of material remained in place for several years.
Editor Jake Jacquet informs us that TSR Periodicals, the company that publishes The Dragon, is changing its name to Dragon Publishing (which remained a wholly owned subsidiary of TSR, Inc). One reason for the change was distinguishing themselves from TSR Hobbies (also owned by TSR, Inc.), the sister-company that published Dungeons & Dragons. Jacquet says,
Jacquet also notes that Dawn Pekul has joined the accounts department, bringing the total number of employees up to 6.
This month's special attraction is a 10-page lift-out game called Ringside, and it is a boxing simulator written by TSR co-owner Brian Blume, who also wrote Boot Hill. The game is pretty simple. You move chits about a gridded ring and roll a percentage dice to hit when adjacent. On a success, you secretly select the punch you threw (uppercut, jab, etc.) while your opponent secretly selects the punch they are anticipating. If your opponent guesses correctly, it mutes the effect of the punch. The game had its fans and is currently rated 5.3 by Board Game Geek. It was republished in 1990 as part of the Best of Dragon Magazine Games boxed set.
On to the regular columns. In "Leomund's Tiny Hut," Len Lakofka buffs up dragons with additional magic. Arthur Rahman continues his "Minarian Legends" series in support of Divine Right, this time with a history of Mivior. "Simulation Corner" by John Prados presents a potted history of the Charles S. Roberts Award for excellence in the historical wargaming hobby. This article is a good read, and it taught me a lot about the early wargaming hobby.
"The Electric Eye" is disappointing this month, with Mark Herro publishing annotated screen dumps of the beloved Star Trek and Civil War computer games. I suppose it may have helped inform those who had never played the games before, but it felt lazy. In "Dragon's Bestiary," Kevin Readman gives us the Foliate, which is a flying tentacled monster that resembles a ball of light. It's a mildly interesting concept, though I don't believe anyone ever republished it.
"From the Sorcerer's Scroll" is typically fascinating, as Gary Gygax discusses the meaning of "good" in the D&D game world. He asserts that the game provides "pretty clear definitions" of good and evil. However, he says this is true "nominally" rather than "conceptually" - whatever he means by that! The longer the article goes on, the more relative his concept of good becomes, and perhaps it ultimately demonstrates how hard it is to model morality in games.
"The Dragon's Augury" has a single lengthy review this month, concerning Freedom in The Galaxy from SPI. Reviewer Tony Watson says it is an "impressive game" of "grand scope," and "one of the few of SPI's full-size SF games to really live up to expectations."
The issue includes an eclectic collection of other feature articles. The longest of these is Gardner Fox's "The Cup of Golden Death," the latest Niall of the Far Travels stories. This fiction found a small audience but is a pale shadow of the Conan stories it imitates. In "Tesseracts," Allen Wells describes how to create a tesseract-shaped dungeon.
Merle Rasmussen describes how he created the Top Secret RPG in "The Rasmussen Files." It's an amusing article written in the style of a confidential intelligence report. In "The Seven Magical Planets," Tom Moldvay shows how you can use the ancient idea of planetary correspondences ("as above so below") to add flavor to your campaign.
F.C. MacKnight concludes his series on Lankhmar with a challenging puzzle. This series has mainly been of interest to fans. "It's the little things that count" is a D&D story by Lewis Bryson, describing a short dungeon crawl. These sorts of stories rarely make for good reading, and this one is no exception. Bryson is known for contributing to Ysgarth around this time, a simulationist RPG renowned for its detail and complexity. Rounding things out, "Spelling out a strategy for hostile Magic-Users," by Jon Mattson presents a series of tables for randomly determining the spells used by enemy spellcasters. Mattson was a frequent contributor to The Dragon and later wrote an AD&D adventure for Judges Guild.
And that's a wrap! My favorite articles were "The Seven Magical Planets," which gave me several campaign ideas, and "Simulation Corner," which shared some fascinating history that I didn't know before. The next issue features women in gaming, a Top Secret module, and a new NPC—the Anti-Paladin!
