Dragon Reflections #93

Dragon Publishing released Dragon #93 in January 1985. It is 100 pages long and has a cover price of $3.00. This issue features world crafting, high-level druids, and a fishy ecology!

The cover is by Jeff Busch and depicts the transformation of a weretiger, with a real tiger standing guard in the foreground. I like it better than Busch's cover for Dragon #90, but the execution still feels a bit off. Interior artists include Jim Holloway, Bob Maurus, Atanielle Annyn Noel, Jane Hoffman, Marvel Bullpen, Dave Trampier, Denton Elliott, Richard Tomasic, and Larry Elmore.

This month's special attraction is "The Gypsy Train" by Richard Fichera. The article provides a vivid depiction of wandering travellers for your AD&D game, including descriptions of their wagons, lifestyle, and key personalities. The material is accompanied by several adventure seeds and some paper cut-outs, enabling you to assemble 3d wagons. It's a nice idea but marred by stereotyping. Fichera published a few articles in various RPG magazines around this time.

Gary Gygax contributes a pair of articles. In "Life Beyond 15th Level," he expands druids beyond their previous level cap (level 14 in the Player's Handbook, extended to level 15 in Dragon #65). Grand Druids can now relinquish their title and follow the path of the Hierophant, advancing up to the 23rd level and gaining abilities such as planar travel, longevity, and the power to conjure elementals. It's actually a fascinating demonstration of how AD&D lost the concept of an "end game" for characters.

In "Thinking for Yourself," Gygax addresses, in a general way, the controversies facing Dungeons & Dragons. It was the height of the satanic panic, and the game was under attack from various parties. Gygax defends role-playing games, emphasising liberty of conscience and the harmlessness of imaginative play.

Arthur Collins shares his insights on world-building in "The Making of a Milieu." He recommends beginning your world-building process around a single compelling concept—this could be inspired by a culture, a distinctive event, or even a unique map feature—and then steadily layering details like social exchanges, geography, and evolving political events. He also emphasises the importance of an overarching goal to tie your campaign together, supported by lively NPC interactions and dynamic socio-political developments to keep players actively invested in the world. I'll admit, it makes me feel a bit inadequate! Collins contributed many articles to Dragon as well as DMGR2: The Castle Guide.

In "The Ecology of the Eye of the Deep," Ed Greenwood delves into the biology and behaviour of this aquatic monstrosity, examining its habitat, hunting strategies, and breeding cycle. He presents the article as a scholarly dialogue among sages in Hillsfar, moderated by Auvras the Enquirer. Greenwood includes several game design notes, such as the mechanics of the eye-flash attack and explaining the limitations of its hold abilities. It's not my favourite monster, but Greenwood's description makes it compelling.

Stephen Inniss provides practical rules for jumping and leaping in "Short Hops and Big Drops," detailing distance calculations and impact consequences for AD&D characters. I'm growing a little weary of these maths-heavy simulationist articles! Inniss was a regular contributor to Dragon.

Frank Mentzer's "Ay PronunseeAY shun Gyd" tackles the challenges of pronouncing various AD&D words, mainly monster names. Anyone looking for the official pronunciation of "bulette" will be disappointed, as he gives four variants!

"Agencies and Alignments" by Merle Rasmussen expands the Top Secret game universe by detailing rival espionage organisations. Some of the naming feels a bit lazy, such as "The Agency," "The Cartel", and "The Exterminators." He also introduces a political alignment system, which looks useful, though underdeveloped.

"Eira," a short story by Josepha Sherman, is an atmospheric fairy tale about a young bard attempting to free a swan-maiden from a dangerous Faerie kingdom. Sherman, a prolific folklorist and novelist, uses evocative prose and creates a vibrant setting. However, the story leans too heavily on standard fairy-tale tropes and hence feels slightly stale.

Finally, the ARES section is back with 14 pages of science-fiction and superhero content:

• "The Marvel-Phile" by Jeff Grubb presents more Avenger stats, this time covering Mockingbird and Shroud.
• "New Ships for Old" by Stefan Jones shows how to redesign starships in Space Opera.
• "New Brotherhoods" by Peter C. Zelinski introduces minor Cryptic Alliances for Gamma World.
• "Rare Wines and Ready Cash" by Tony Watson provides practical guidance on agricultural trade in Star Frontiers.

And that's a wrap! The standout article was Greenwood's "Ecology," though I'm sorry there were no game or book reviews this time. Next month, we have ranger changes, the ecology of chimera, and a new Creature Catalog!

 

[Flying Toaster]

Most often said by folks whose GMs weren't using the rules for henchmen and hirelings back in the day, and probably not the morale rules either. Awful lot of people who were forced to play without the extra manpower they were meant to have and never saw what Charisma could do. Or the worst case scenario where they used a variant of the rules to have hirelings constantly betray the PCs. Those GMs led to a lot of bad cases of "Never Trust An NPC" syndrome.

1e was a peculiar time, even if it was my main edition as a kid.

Like many other 80’s kids I learned B/X D&D rules from the red and blue boxes, but then left them behind when I “graduated” to playing AD&D 1E with older kids who had house-ruled away much of that game. I read the 1E DMG cover to cover, so I knew that AD&D characters were supposed to compete with rival PCs on time-sensitive expeditions into multi-level dungeons, pay exorbitant fees for lodging and level training, hire hirelings, retire at name level to build strongholds, and use Charisma to recruit followers and retain their loyalty.

But nobody I played with even seemed to be aware of those rules, let alone interested in using them. Henchmen, reaction rolls, etc were just arcane lore from the back of the DMG, like the LOTR appendices. Charisma was a dump stat once you got past character generation. DMs struggled to run NPCs properly and most players saw NPC interaction as an annoying distraction, like the talky exposition scenes in an action flick.

It didn't help that there were very few attempts to run a proper campaign of any sort. I made a few halfway-decent homebrew adventures, but most DMs just ran the classic early TSR modules as unconnected one-offs. Players would examine their stable of characters and pick out a few who were suitable for the module the DM wanted to run. We had to use multiple characters because we were always short on players and a viable 1E party needed at least 6-8 characters. We carefully tallied up XP at the end of each module, but down time activities were largely left to the imagination, rendering our ever-expanding treasure hoards somewhat pointless.

The 1E era retained just enough of the old OD&D wargaming heritage to cause confusion about the DM’s role, which could encourage adversarial DM styles like the dreaded but seldom-seen “killer DM”. I got a hint of what the real old school was like from reading Best of Dragon Vol. 1, which was entertaining but very confusing. Conflicting advice from the rulebooks and TSR staff editorials did not help either.

 

[Flying Toaster]

Yes, I think it's cool to expand the druid levels in this article.

I liked 1e druids and at least one person in my group ran a druid once, but I understand why nobody in your group wanted to run one. I remember EXACTLY why people in my group weren't too fond of running druids back in the day. It boiled down to several big reasons:

1) Strict armor and weapon restrictions.

2) Having to waste a high stat on the minimum 15 Charisma requirement. Charisma wasn't a terribly useful stat in 1e.

3) They could only go up to 14th level. It's true that assassins also had a level cap, but assassins could at least go up to 15th and they were a lot cooler. Not that assassins necessarily had better abilities, but the players just thought it was cooler to run an assassin than a "tree hugger".

4) Before the druid could attain level 12, he had to fight another druid. If he lost, he'd drop down to half the experience points between the previous level and the one he was trying to attain. He'd have do the same thing again once he got the XP to reach level 12 again and keep doing it until he finally bested the other druid. And then he'd have to repeat the procedure again at level 13 and yet again at level 14. Keep in mind that it took a long, long time to accumulate the XP to get to the higher levels in 1e.

5) The emphasis on 1e was dungeon delving, where the druid's effectiveness was pretty limited, or at least that was the players' perception of the class's abilities. Dragon issue #48 even had an article entitled "Druid in a Dungeon . . . Why not?" to address that very thing.

There are at least two more issues:

6) IIRC Cure Light Wounds was a Level 2 spell for 1E Druids, limiting their effectiveness even in the relatively unpopular role of combat medic. This was partially remedied by the UA spell Goodberry and the introduction of Healing and Herbalism proficiencies in later 1E and 2E.

7) Druid spells needed mistletoe as a material component - fresh-cut under ideal conditions for maximum efficacy, although stale mistletoe or oak leaves would do in a pinch. Strict adherence to the rules could effectively prevent Druids from leaving climates or planes where those plants grew, with the Druid player stuck playing “Mistletoe Quest” instead of D&D.

I enjoyed playing the 1E Druid, but even as a teenager I knew that the class was a bizarre chimera of pseudo-“Celtick” lore and nature warrior tropes - mists and megaliths. A 1E Druid might be kitted out with a scimitar and a wooden shield, or maybe some obscure UA weapon like an aklys or a staff sling. In my groups none of our Druids ever got high enough to reach the “kung fu fighting” levels.

 

[Flying Toaster]

the official expansion of the druid's levels was nice, but.... I can't recall anyone ever in any of the groups I was in actually running a druid character. Which was odd, because when it was all so new back in 1E days and there wasn't a lot of official material, I saw people trying about everything else... monks, assassins, even a couple of bards, and quite a few of the unofficial NPC only classes from Dragon. But never a druid.

I am always curious to read about what kind of characters were popular in other gaming groups. In my late 80’s AD&D 1E games several of us played Druids from time to time. We also figured that if Elves and Half-Elves could multi-class as a Cleric / Fighter or Cleric / Fighter / Mage, why not a Druid / Ranger or Druid / Ranger / Mage? The only real problem was conflicting alignment requirements, so it was funny when our homebrew solution (Neutral Good) was made official by the 2E PHB letting Druids be any Neutral alignment.

OTOH no one ever played a Monk or Assassin, and I only ever saw one of those ridiculous 1E Bards - an ultra high level übermensch, the type who uses a maul of the titans as a croquet mallet and who mercs gods from the Deities & Demigods book (unexpurgated edition, naturally ). We briefly tried the Unearthed Arcana classes before abandoning them as unworkable. Some people expressed interest in the Dragon NPC classes, especially the Death Master and the Paladin variants, but I think only the Archer or Archer-Ranger ever made it to the table once or twice.

Looking back I realize that most of the people in my old groups had one or two personal favorite classes which they always tried to play, whereas I wanted to keep trying new classes. I was the only one who ever played a Paladin or Illusionist, and I played several Clerics and Druids because usually nobody else wanted to play the combat medic role. Whereas Thieves and Rangers were pretty popular in my groups despite having fairly weak abilities that were hard to use; they got by on the Rule of Cool.

 

[talien]

Like many other 80’s kids I learned B/X D&D rules from the red and blue boxes, but then left them behind when I “graduated” to playing AD&D 1E with older kids who had house-ruled away much of that game. I read the 1E DMG cover to cover, so I knew that AD&D characters were supposed to compete with rival PCs on time-sensitive expeditions into multi-level dungeons, pay exorbitant fees for lodging and level training, hire hirelings, retire at name level to build strongholds, and use Charisma to recruit followers and retain their loyalty.

But nobody I played with even seemed to be aware of those rules, let alone interested in using them. Henchmen, reaction rolls, etc were just arcane lore from the back of the DMG, like the LOTR appendices. Charisma was a dump stat once you got past character generation. DMs struggled to run NPCs properly and most players saw NPC interaction as an annoying distraction, like the talky exposition scenes in an action flick.

It didn't help that there were very few attempts to run a proper campaign of any sort. I made a few halfway-decent homebrew adventures, but most DMs just ran the classic early TSR modules as unconnected one-offs. Players would examine their stable of characters and pick out a few who were suitable for the module the DM wanted to run. We had to use multiple characters because we were always short on players and a viable 1E party needed at least 6-8 characters. We carefully tallied up XP at the end of each module, but down time activities were largely left to the imagination, rendering our ever-expanding treasure hoards somewhat pointless.

The 1E era retained just enough of the old OD&D wargaming heritage to cause confusion about the DM’s role, which could encourage adversarial DM styles like the dreaded but seldom-seen “killer DM”. I got a hint of what the real old school was like from reading Best of Dragon Vol. 1, which was entertaining but very confusing. Conflicting advice from the rulebooks and TSR staff editorials did not help either.

This was 100% my experience, and I was the DM! We played basic rules, jumped to AD&D, were utterly confused and just sort of kept the "Basic" style of D&D without realizing the differences. We then played the AD&D modules "cold" without understanding what made sense, using tournament characters, etc. We barely understood hirelings, and once the characters got to that level they were stupid powerful anyway. As I'm fond of recounting, one of my players decided he would just spend money as a reward to get NPCs to find him a vorpal sword ("I got a million gold; surely one of you idiot can go find one for me right?") inadvertently becoming a quest giver NPC for a future party.

But we really didn't UNDERSTAND the game we were playing in high school. We played one time with a college player and he was absolutely mortified that we didn't draw maps, didn't seem to have a plan, and basically were what all the older gamers feared, that unserious bunch of unruly players who don't REALLY know how to play the game properly: MUNCHKINS.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I am always curious to read about what kind of characters were popular in other gaming groups.

I started out in the late 70's and played some form of D&D or another steadily (but not exclusively) until about 1983, took a multi-year break, then resumed when Spelljammer came out, which let a few years of dabbling in the settings that flooded out under 2e AD&D as TSR was dying. Was an early and enthusiastic adoptee of 3e but didn't play much, too many other, greater interests. 4e got by far the most actual table time of any WotC edition, and I moved into 13th Age without regret. Paltested 5e and couldn't stand it, and I have zero interest in whatever the official name in for 5.5. Just don't need more new fantasy RPGs, period.

Going back to the beginning (which I assume is of the most interest to you) my childhood (I started at 11) D&D experiences were split into two parallel lines. As a rural small town kid, there was a small but zealous group of players from the local school district. I gamed with them the most, and it was all AD&D owing to it being shiny and new and "obviously" better/more grown-up than Basic or OD&D. I have very little play experience with any iteration of Basic prior to the Rules Encyclopedia and Gazetteers, which apparently leaves me in the minority. OTOH, the local game group was deeply confused about what was Advanced and what was Basic, and I know many of my slightly-older (two years was a big deal back then) DMs shoehorned quite a bit of Basic stuff in without really grokking that they were doing so.

That was the home game. There was also a gaming club in the "Big City" (not even 100,000 people in those days) that I could usually get to despite the 45 minute car ride each way, although that died off in the early 80s for me. They had specific "kiddie tables" run by some of the most gleefully masochistic GMs I've ever met using crazy mashup rules full of homebrew, and mostly meant to keep a dozen or so teenage boys (mostly "city kids") entertained for 4-6 hours. I managed to graduate to "kid knows his gaming" status pretty early and drifted between RQ, T&T, and more definably AD&D-ish tables, along with a fairly steady Traveller game that led me to infect the locals back home with scifi roleplaying. I only visited the club a few times post-college, and despite there being plenty of adult tables to play at I found I preferred playing at home or the FLGS, a prefrence that lasted until 2020.

Having said all that to establish where I'm coming from:

The local games were dominated by multiclass fighter/magic-users of the elven/half-elven variety, supported by large numbers of Dwarf and human fighters and human clerics. PC thieves were very rare, and we were constantly being robbed by NPC hireling thieves in response. People shied away from druids due to the level cap, very few people ever rolled stats that would allow a paladin,. Weirdly, rangers were almost as common as straight fighters, and almost everyone who made the stat rolls to allow it played one - something I confess to doing myself a couple of times. We used all the hireling/henchman/follower and morale rules pretty stringently, which helped our lower player-count games by bulking up our parties. A lot of gameplay took on the tone of an exploratory, archeological or military expeditions.

The club games were more chaotic and I didn't know the people around me nearly as well so it's harder to track, but I recall there being a lot of fighters from any kin that had an decent cap in the class, a lot of (mostly human) clerics, a surprising number of half-orcs, and very few thieves. The group that I played with longest over there was also dedicated to the use of NPCs in the party to bulk up numbers, but tended to have more players t start with so when we had everyone and their backup singers show up at once it was like a small army - and got treated as one by most NPCs. Surprisingly few elves of any kind, although that may have been die to several DMs disliking them and casting them as villains in their games - something I also saw in RQ.

And yeah, all that has influenced me over the years, even if "play an army" style games are largely a thing of the past now. Ars Nagica might actually be the closest it get to how I remember D&D being in my youth.

 

[Flying Toaster]

OTOH, the local game group was deeply confused about what was Advanced and what was Basic, and I know many of my slightly-older (two years was a big deal back then) DMs shoehorned quite a bit of Basic stuff in without really grokking that they were doing so.

On the rare occasions that we tried to do something with our characters that was not already covered by the rulebooks (which was sometimes considered cheating by the strictest DMs!), the matter would often be decided with a d20 roll-under ability score check. None of us realized that the rule seems to have appeared in the Moldvay Basic Set and only there.

Today I am absolutely convinced that the simple consistency of the B/X D&D ability score system was vastly superior to the muddled mess of AD&D ability scores. Percentile STR did not make Fighters competitive with Mages, it just incentivized fudging during character creation.

I managed to graduate to "kid knows his gaming" status pretty early and drifted between RQ, T&T, and more definably AD&D-ish tables

I actually got interested in AD&D first, because a guy two years older than me had lots of RPG stuff: AD&D, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, Warhammer, etc. We were generally TSR snobs and I only knew about T&T, RQ, Judges Guild, and Traveler from reading Dragon. I learned D&D rules from the B/X sets, played and ran B/X modules as DM for a while, then started playing and running AD&D once I got the books. My AD&D groups were mostly my age or a few years older, but we also played Trek-based war game Star Fleet Battles with a guy who was about five years older than us. He had pretty much everything available for that game at the time. There was another guy who ran AD&D and occasionally GURPS or Paranoia.

The local games were dominated by multiclass fighter/magic-users of the elven/half-elven variety, supported by large numbers of Dwarf and human fighters and human clerics.

Elves were very popular because of LOTR, +1 sword & bow bonuses, multi-classing, etc. One of my favorite characters was a Grey Elf Fighter / Mage. I was the only one in our group who ever played a Dwarf (Mountain Dwarf Fighter) or a Gnome (Illusionist / Thief). No one in our group ever played a Halfling in AD&D, which was a mistake - they had great thieving bonuses and +3 with all missile weapons. I actually think one element in that reluctance to play the short folk was teenage insecurities about height and being cool.

Weirdly, rangers were almost as common as straight fighters, and almost everyone who made the stat rolls to allow it played one - something I confess to doing myself a couple of times.

We were pretty lax about dice rolls during character generation. I imagine that if someone is in a stricter game and manages to roll up stats which qualify for a rare class, then most people would want to play that class at least once. Most of our group played CRPGs like Wizardry which motivated players in the same way - click that RNG one more time to roll up a rare character (“Come on, NINJA!” ).

We used all the hireling/henchman/follower and morale rules pretty stringently, which helped our lower player-count games by bulking up our parties. A lot of gameplay took on the tone of an exploratory, archeological or military expeditions.

That all sounds like it would be fun to try some time with the right group and GM.

a surprising number of half-orcs

I never saw anyone play a Half-Orc, not even once. We were all LOTR fans who cut our D&D teeth clearing out the Caves of Chaos, so the game told us in no uncertain terms that Orcs and other “humanoids” (you sure can see the pulp horror and sci-fi roots of D&D in early game terms) were dirty, smelly, ugly, stupid, vicious, bullying mook minions who get merced by Our Heroes™. So why would any of us want to play half of one? When I start running games again I am going to play up the old fey roots of the Goblin types and maybe turn Orcs into a slightly comical “proud warrior race” reminiscent of TNG-era Klingons.

Nobody ever played a Half-Elf either, for a completely different reason. We did not know the term “sub-optimal build” back then, but we did realize that since we swapped out demi-human level limits for XP penalties, there was never a situation in which an Elf was not the better choice.

Long before the first Tiefling or Dragonborn, there were people who would only ever play overpowered rule-bending monster races. One guy we played with had three recurring PC types:

(1) Dual-wielding Dark Elf Ranger - wonder where that came from?
(2) Krynn Minotaur (20 STR) - even though we were not playing Dragonlance...
(3) Half-Ogre (19 STR) - contributed by none other than Gary Gygax himself, as we saw earlier in this series; I am half surprised this did not make the cut for inclusion in Unearthed Arcana.

 

[Starmaster]

But nobody I played with even seemed to be aware of those rules, let alone interested in using them. Henchmen, reaction rolls, etc were just arcane lore from the back of the DMG, like the LOTR appendices. Charisma was a dump stat once you got past character generation.

I was DM most of the time for my group. We knew all the rules well and were quite aware of all the henchmen and hireling rules, but few of the players in my 1e groups had much interest in dealing with NPCs. I neither encouraged nor discouraged the players' use of hirelings & henchmen. It was entirely up to them. In the end, it didn't matter whether hirelings & henchmen could be useful at times; the players mostly just wanted to quickly get to the adventure site, explore, clear out the monsters, grab as much loot as possible, and move on.

 

[Starmaster]

I never saw anyone play a Half-Orc

The second character I ever played was a half-orc named "Crunt". I didn't yet have a player's handbook since it was way, way, way back in the day, so I relied on the DM for a description of the race. He said half-orcs were ugly, rude, crude, and went around farting all the time. None of that mattered to me because he was a fighter and being a half-orc gave +1 on strength and +1 on constitution which was great for fighters.

The poor guy was killed, dragged back to town by the other party members, and raised from the dead around seven times while taking on "G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief" (so much for the constitution bonus, since each raising from the dead costs a point). Technically, half-orcs were not included in the races that can be affected by "raise dead", but I guess the DM was being generous.

 

[griffon8]

I often referred to that pronunciation guide. The worst part of it for me was not remembering what issue it was in and normal searches of the PDFs were useless with that title. I finally extracted it (unprotected PDFs!) and renamed it to "A Pronunciation Guide" just so I could find the dang thing.

 

[Zaukrie]

I often referred to that pronunciation guide. The worst part of it for me was not remembering what issue it was in and normal searches of the PDFs were useless with that title. I finally extracted it (unprotected PDFs!) and renamed it to "A Pronunciation Guide" just so I could find the dang thing.

I've extracted and filed every article from my PDFs. So much easier this way.