Dragon Issue 50: June 1981
part 1/2
80 pages. Welcome to a landmark issue, in more ways than one. Both their 50th issue, and their 5th birthday, this means it's time to do a little looking back. My, hasn't the time just flown by. They also have another slew of dragon related articles, as is their habit, and most of the usual suspects show their faces.
In this issue:
Out on a limb: A letter criticizing them for not offering enough material useful to D&D players in issue 46. They also want more wilderness and urban adventures.
Another letter asking for reprints. Which they deny. Even with the massive increase in readership, the logistics involved in reprints make it still not profitable. Just go buy the best ofs instead.
A letter telling a story of another monty haul DM. They aren't going away.
A letter complaining that recent centerpieces have sometimes been off center, so you can't remove them from the magazine cleanly. They apologize, give us permission to photocopy those pages, so you don't have to ruin your magazine to extract them, and promise to do better in the future. How nice of them.
Another letter complaining about how expensive gaming can become.
A letter criticizing the Top secret Module Dr Yes from issue 48. Oh well, can't please everyone.
We also get a nice birthday piccie and get to see the story behind its creation.
Self defense for dragons: Ha ha! This is an article that'll have quite a substantial impact on next edition's dragons. Wing buffets! Kicks! Tail lashes! Scaling damage based upon size. Watch out adventurers, the namesake of the system just got a hell of a lot more badass.
True dragons: Lew Pulsipher also believes dragons as presented in the rules are insufficiently mysterious, magical and badass, and has his own suggestions on how to beef them up and give them more variety. Polymorphing, supernatural terror aura, magic resistance, invisibility detection, again, all suggestions that got incorporated into the next editions dragons. Plus several that didn't, such as anti-magic breath, truenames and custom spell lists. Reminds me of arcana evolved in the way it posits a single race of dragons, each of which has individual powers, rather than dozens of subraces that could never maintain viable breeding populations in an ecology. Again, I quite like most of this.
Hatching is only the beginning: Want to raise a baby dragon? This gives you lots of help, by giving the probabilities that various things will happen, based on how you treat the little nipper. Teach it how to fly and wash itself properly when its young, or it'll have bad habits in those areas for the rest of its life. And watch out, because if you treat it badly, it'll turn on you pretty quickly. Without the inherent sociability of humans, they aren't the kind of creature to put up with abusive relationships. Obviously, using this puts in quite a bit of implied setting and ecology, but I guess you have to make decisions on matters like that. Still, another high quality article, that can be adapted to later editions without too much problem.
The kzinti: They got into the Star trek cartoon. Now Larry Niven's misogynistic alien felines make their way into the D&D multiverse (as usual, a wizard did it.) They go into a lot of detail on their social structure and ecology (because as prime predators, they need quite an infrastructure to support them. If worst come to worst, they can just butcher their troll slaves and eat them repeatedly and let them regenerate.) A well written article, although it does come a little close to mary-sueing its subject as badasses. Still, they did end up losing to humans in the original stories, and he doesn't forget why. You'll just have to make sure the PC's work hard so they don't get outshone by the antagonists.
Bazaar of the Bizarre: Only one item this month. However, it is an exceedingly powerful item, with a long and interesting history and set of powers. Barlithian's Magical Mirror. Like many artifacts, though, it'll often be more trouble than it's worth to own, with all manner of strange creatures coming to look at their reflections in it. Maybe it would be best to sell it on. After all, there'll be no shortage of creatures willing to pay ridiculous prices for it, not know what they're getting themselves into.
The 'zines: A big load of fanzines get reviewed this month. Which is intriguing. Nice to see them acknowledging the other people trying to get into their field. I wonder if this'll become a regular feature. Like the computer game reviews, they use a system where each magazine gets marks out of 10 in 4 different fields, allowing you to make a better value judgement than just reading the descriptions.
Abyss is a short AD&D focussed zine with a tendency to go into arcane and complex subjects that they can't really do justice to in the time they have. Still, that does mean they're enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subjects. But when you get too geeky, its hard to get mass appeal.
Alarums and Excursions is the top amateur press association zine, with a circulation of around 500, and regular monthly issues. Obviously pretty well produced, its main flaw is a tendency towards smugness and back-patting commentary between the regular writers. To cover their costs, they charge the writers to get their stuff published in it. Which does suck a little, but thats working in the amateur world for you.
The beholder is a D&D zine that is good on campaign building, but lacks exceptional standout articles.
The lords of chaos has lots of cool ideas from enthusiastic writers, but most of it is from peoples home campaigns, and may not be that adaptable to your game.
Morningstar is from australia, and is consistent and reliable, but not exceptional.
Pandemonium is a magazine based in new york, with lots of communication between industry insiders in it that will probably be impenetrable to an outsider looking in.
Quick quincy Gazette (a rather silly name) is largely written and run by its editor. While short, it packs lots of little tidbits within to snack upon and put in your campaign.
The stormlord is a small magazine that probably isn't quite worth its cost.
Trollcrusher is a british magazine that is organized as a series of columns, largely written independently by its various writers.
The wild hunt is a debate focussed magazine, doing the kind of thing that would be handled by forums nowadays in terms of critical scrutiny of products and ideas. Which means it may be a bit highbrow for the average reader.
Zeppelin has been around even longer than Dragon itself (1974). Made in canada, it covers a wide range of stuff in both wargaming and roleplaying, and is fairly professionally produced.
Don't look! Its A...: Lew Pulsipher gets another article published this month, this time on the intricacies of adjudicating gaze attacks. The principle of firghting them while not looking directly at them is an old one, as old as the idea of monsters with gaze attacks itself. So he creates a fairly simple formula that determines the odds of accidentally looking at at their face when trying to fight them based on ability scores, level, distance, equipment, etc. In this case it's a d20, roll under one. Most of it seems pretty reasonable, although I'd put more emphasis on level and less on dexterity. But thats the kind of tedious quibbling I sneer at in the letters page, so I won't dwell on that.
Man, these things are pains in the ass. One of those monsters which grabs onto you, meaning any attacks against it have a good chance of hitting the victim instead. And there are few things more annoying than being accidentally killed by another PC. One of those monsters designed to annoy players as much as they are to fight characters. 
