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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 7952615" data-attributes="member: 27780">TSR RPGA Volume 1, No. 1: Summer 1981Part 2/4RPGA interview with E. Gary Gygax: Our largest article, and the obvious big selling point of the newszine to hardcore players is Frank Mentzer interviewing Gary. While there is a bit of historical stuff about the development of D&D that I've seen many times, there's also some more RPGA specific stuff about AD&D's development to be more tournament friendly and the creation of Gen Con that's more interesting. Turns out Gary was one of the founders of that too, which also explains why TSR's upper management were so tribal in the Gen Con vs Origins conflict back in the day. It might not really matter which one's the biggest, and being able to support multiple large conventions per year speaks well of the heath of the hobby, but it's still nice to be on top. So this reminds us Gary had his fingers in plenty of other pies beyond D&D and strong opinions about even more things than that. And he's noticeably less cantankerous here than many of his own articles, if no less verbose, as they overrun and have to continue it in the next issue. Oh well, at least I won't have to wait three months to see it like people at the time. This is a pretty entertaining little piece to unearth, so I'm looking forward to part 2. The Fastest Guns That Never Lived: In another sign that they don't really have enough material for this, they decide to reprint a compilation of these Boot Hill articles from Dragon Magazine. A jumbled collection of real world historical cowboys, characters from specific films or TV series, and the actors that played them. As before, I'm vaguely irritated by the fact that they have stats much higher than PC's, and a whole load of special abilities you can't have on top of that. That never ceases to be a problem with their named NPC's from fiction. They're playing a much more high action and cinematic game than you are, despite theoretically running on the same system. It's like they don't want you to tell stories as awesome as theirs in your own games. Notes for the Dungeon Master: This article is somewhat more entertaining despite having seen a fair few like it, as it's a list of sadistic exploits with which to screw your players over. Ah, good old fashioned adversarial play. There'll always be more tricks in that vein to come up with, even if you already have hundreds. So like new monsters, spells, and magic items, this is the kind of advice that never gets old, even if it does sometimes wind up repeating itself in the long run. Hopefully there'll be a good few gems like this to be found along the newszine's run. Muahahahaha.</blockquote>

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