Let's read the entire run
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- Start date
(un)reason
Legend
The strategic review 7: April 1976
The last issue. That was quick. We get our first taste of colour on the cover, and the size and price increases again, to 24 pages and $1. A 4fold increase in only a year. I find it amusing that if you put all 7 strategic review issues together, they are still smaller than a single issue of dragon at its heyday (for those of you who are wondering, the largest issue ever is 170 pages long. Which one it is, I shan't reveal yet though.)
They start off by announcing the demise of TSR (
) and its successors, Dragon, and Little Wars (whatever happened to that? Oh well, I guess I'll probably find out in a while) to be published on alternating months, and their new staff. (Dave Sutherland, oh yes, we're talking iconic here) This is exciting stuff, and I have to wonder how people reacted at the time. Hopefully the letters page will be apprearing soon so I can find out. Anyone who was there at the time, I want to hear your comments as well.
This issue also contains:
Gary explaining the vancian magic system, why he designed it that way, and taking potshots at powergamers and people who don't use the rules as written. He admits that despite attempts to balance them, magic users are probably still the most powerful class in the game, especially once they get magic items. I get the impression I'm going to be seeing a lot more of this. Oh well, I knew what I was getting myself into.
Snark between the various companies at gencon and origins. Ahh, dirty laundry, how we love to see thee aired.
A full page advert. Supplement III eldritch wizardry coming soon, featuring druds, (ha ha, they misspelled the advert) psionics, new monsters and lots of other stuff. Doing this is really giving me a picture of the order the D&D classes appeared.
Stats for lots of TV gunslingers for boot hill. Another thing that would be harder to get away with today, thanks to copyright annoyances.
A comic, Dirt. Simple little 3 panneler. Meh.
Wouldya like to take a survey. There's a $1 store credit slip in it for you. Things weren't that cheap even then so you'd have to spend more money to take advantage of it. Nice work if you can get it.
Gencon 1976, special guest Fritz Lieber. Not surprising, since they're making a game of his books. Still, 2 full page ads in quick sucession, they're really upping the commercial content.
Fiction: What price gold and glory, by Jim Hayes. An unremarkable little encounter tale featuring a werebear and a pixie as the protagonists.
GM advice on town building. This is system free, and the kind of stuff that is still relevant today.
Magical items: The cup and talisman of akbar (no al yet, curiously) staff of the priest kings and the brazen bottle. All familiar to me, and are the sort that seriously change the power dynamics in the game. Give to your players with caution.
Centerfold spread of the Dungeon game store.
More on the conflict between origins and gen con, and about attempts from the established wargaming crowd to marginalize the new pen & paper gaming style. Another case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. And once again there's the air of you can't stop the new ideas. We know we've got something good and are going to spawn lots of imitators oh baby
Finally, a monster I don't recognize. The denebian slime devil. I can see why this one never caught on, as it's basicaly an unkillable comic relief annoyance monster. The catoblepas, I do recognize however, with its weird combination of weak neck and instakill gaze. Goes to show what players and GM's prefer. DEATH BEFORE HUMILIATION!!!
A third page full of adverts.
A boring essay on the use of missile weapons in historical warfare.
Optional rules giving thieves 18% dexterity scores(a la fighters exceptional strength) which give them bonuses to their thieving skills. Another one I've never seen before and obviously didn't catch on. Frankly 18% strength was arbitrary and dumb enough. We don't need it applied to other abilities as well.
Lots of tekumel stuff. Interesting that easily the best setting stuff in the early days is coming from here. Whatever happened to M.A.R Barker?
An essay by Gygax on what constitutes successful gamemastering. As expected it is quite oriented towards competitive play, chastising GM's who let their players advance level too quickly, and encouraging strict enforcement of timekeeping rules. We also get our first estimation of proper advancement time. According to Gary, it should take about a year of weekly gaming to get to name level, and then characters should gain around 2-3 levels a year after that, so overall, getting to 20th level should take around 4-5 years. So yeah, things have definitely got a lot more slanted in the players favour since then. I suppose since they make up more than 80% of the group at any one time, social pressure would make it happen sooner or later.
With the rapid expansion, there's finally room for things to slip between the cracks, and me to see stuff I haven't before. As a result, this issue definitely feels less consequential, despite (or perhaps because) its the last one. But It's a good deal less dull than issue 5, and as the intermediate between formats, it feels significant historically.
The last issue. That was quick. We get our first taste of colour on the cover, and the size and price increases again, to 24 pages and $1. A 4fold increase in only a year. I find it amusing that if you put all 7 strategic review issues together, they are still smaller than a single issue of dragon at its heyday (for those of you who are wondering, the largest issue ever is 170 pages long. Which one it is, I shan't reveal yet though.)
They start off by announcing the demise of TSR (
) and its successors, Dragon, and Little Wars (whatever happened to that? Oh well, I guess I'll probably find out in a while) to be published on alternating months, and their new staff. (Dave Sutherland, oh yes, we're talking iconic here) This is exciting stuff, and I have to wonder how people reacted at the time. Hopefully the letters page will be apprearing soon so I can find out. Anyone who was there at the time, I want to hear your comments as well. This issue also contains:
Gary explaining the vancian magic system, why he designed it that way, and taking potshots at powergamers and people who don't use the rules as written. He admits that despite attempts to balance them, magic users are probably still the most powerful class in the game, especially once they get magic items. I get the impression I'm going to be seeing a lot more of this. Oh well, I knew what I was getting myself into.
Snark between the various companies at gencon and origins. Ahh, dirty laundry, how we love to see thee aired.
A full page advert. Supplement III eldritch wizardry coming soon, featuring druds, (ha ha, they misspelled the advert) psionics, new monsters and lots of other stuff. Doing this is really giving me a picture of the order the D&D classes appeared.
Stats for lots of TV gunslingers for boot hill. Another thing that would be harder to get away with today, thanks to copyright annoyances.
A comic, Dirt. Simple little 3 panneler. Meh.
Wouldya like to take a survey. There's a $1 store credit slip in it for you. Things weren't that cheap even then so you'd have to spend more money to take advantage of it. Nice work if you can get it.
Gencon 1976, special guest Fritz Lieber. Not surprising, since they're making a game of his books. Still, 2 full page ads in quick sucession, they're really upping the commercial content.
Fiction: What price gold and glory, by Jim Hayes. An unremarkable little encounter tale featuring a werebear and a pixie as the protagonists.
GM advice on town building. This is system free, and the kind of stuff that is still relevant today.
Magical items: The cup and talisman of akbar (no al yet, curiously) staff of the priest kings and the brazen bottle. All familiar to me, and are the sort that seriously change the power dynamics in the game. Give to your players with caution.
Centerfold spread of the Dungeon game store.
More on the conflict between origins and gen con, and about attempts from the established wargaming crowd to marginalize the new pen & paper gaming style. Another case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. And once again there's the air of you can't stop the new ideas. We know we've got something good and are going to spawn lots of imitators oh baby
Finally, a monster I don't recognize. The denebian slime devil. I can see why this one never caught on, as it's basicaly an unkillable comic relief annoyance monster. The catoblepas, I do recognize however, with its weird combination of weak neck and instakill gaze. Goes to show what players and GM's prefer. DEATH BEFORE HUMILIATION!!!
A third page full of adverts.
A boring essay on the use of missile weapons in historical warfare.
Optional rules giving thieves 18% dexterity scores(a la fighters exceptional strength) which give them bonuses to their thieving skills. Another one I've never seen before and obviously didn't catch on. Frankly 18% strength was arbitrary and dumb enough. We don't need it applied to other abilities as well.
Lots of tekumel stuff. Interesting that easily the best setting stuff in the early days is coming from here. Whatever happened to M.A.R Barker?
An essay by Gygax on what constitutes successful gamemastering. As expected it is quite oriented towards competitive play, chastising GM's who let their players advance level too quickly, and encouraging strict enforcement of timekeeping rules. We also get our first estimation of proper advancement time. According to Gary, it should take about a year of weekly gaming to get to name level, and then characters should gain around 2-3 levels a year after that, so overall, getting to 20th level should take around 4-5 years. So yeah, things have definitely got a lot more slanted in the players favour since then. I suppose since they make up more than 80% of the group at any one time, social pressure would make it happen sooner or later.
With the rapid expansion, there's finally room for things to slip between the cracks, and me to see stuff I haven't before. As a result, this issue definitely feels less consequential, despite (or perhaps because) its the last one. But It's a good deal less dull than issue 5, and as the intermediate between formats, it feels significant historically.
Last edited:
WayneLigon
Adventurer
Huh?
You'd see this a LOT in most magazines until mmm the mid-Nineties I think. They did lots of stats for book characters and in the early Top Secret days did stats for all the major fictional spies; Different Worlds did almost an entire issue for stats on the New Teen Titans (the biggest breakthrough comic at the time), and the X-Men.
Tekumel was the first 'setting' and had awesome production values for the time, something that oddly enough the main D&D line never got. They had a huge vinyl map of the main city in the boxed set rules! You'll see a lot more Tekumel stuff as time goes on, but it never really seems to catch on with the general gaming populace despite having a fanatical core following - the almost impenetrable language pretty much ensures that, along with the idea that the adventurers are not just wandering seekers after treasure.
M.A.R Barker is still around, and he's written several Tekumel novels (the mass market ones I've read are quite good) and the game has gone through several publisher and such. I'm not sure where it is right now.
(un)reason
Legend
Werewolf:the Apocalypse. They did have tendency for characters to adopt native american style names such as flight-of-eagles and sees-in-darkness. This is very very easy to parody. I have personally experienced this, and it makes carrying on a serious game rather hard if people giggle every time you say one of the characters names.
I know. In a few years we get to giants in the earth. Much twinkitude will be had.
I remember it got a dual tri-stat/d20 version a couple of years ago after aaaages in publishing limbo. But then guardians of order died, and it's back to publishing limbo again.
(un)reason
Legend
The Dragon issue 1: June 1976
So here we are. The prelude is over, the warming up has finished, It's time to begin running this marathon in earnest. At 32 pages and $1.50, they expand yet again. Some terrible color choices here. Pale yellow-green text on bright pinky-orange background does not make for legible teaser text. While the art is better than the last SR issue, there is still extensive amounts of white space on the cover, and the dragon looks somewhat cartoonish. But then again, I seem to remember seeing early 80's books with similar art, so I suspect that style will be with us for quite a while.
It opens with an editorial spelling out their new intentions - to cease being a house organ (which of course they did successfully for over 20 years before WotC swallowed them up again) but instead to cover the whole roleplaying scene. Rates for articles and artwork coming next issue. Another massive historical change is the need for stamped self addressed envelopes. In this era of ubiquitous computers and quick easy copying, we forget that only a few decades ago, you had to make every copy of an amateur work yourself, and often people would send off their only copy to places.
In this issue:
Fafhrd and the grey mouser give their idiosyncratic opinion on roleplaying and the idea of other people playing in their world. A classic of the "pretend that characters are real in another dimension, and the author is merely writing down their stories" trope that would be used by many D&D authors in the future.
Dirt comic continues.
Converting the battle of the 5 armies from the hobbit to chainmail.
A decidedly arcane method of determining odds of success at a general task based on your attribute. Yeah, I can see why this one never caught on, compared to the simple roll d20 under attribute, possibly with modifiers, that most of us used.
Putting superscience into D&D: No real discussion of logistics or the cool issues that could arise from this here. Essentially just an excuse for jim ward to give us a load of *cough*magic*cough technological devices with a vague backstory about atlanteans. Hey, its a trick that'll work three decades later in Mage. Don't knock it.
Some discussions on language in D&D. Does feel very dated, and suffers somewhat from the humans are the only race with different languages problem. Features a cleric who was granted the ability to speak Were-St-Bernard, but who has never actually met a Were-St-Bernard to speak it too, which says it all really.
Fiction: The search for the forbidden chamber by Jake Jaquet. The trope of wizards with metaawareness continues in this silly little tale, featuring a recyclosarus, and whole load of other references and in-jokes.
A 4 page spread of tournament rules for Gen-con 9 by Len Lakofka.
Bullettes! Another monster that barely changed at all throughout editions, Cause what's not to love about a shark that can burrow through the ground with its fin out and then leap out and rip you to shreds. Plus it doesn't have any mechanical kinks that need nerfing, just straightforward combat skills.
Hints on mapping wilderness areas. Another thing that seems to have reduced in focus in recent years, but is still good advice that is still valid now.
An expansion for illusionists by Peter Aronson, bringing them up to 14th level and 7th level spells. Introduces those lovely annoyances color spray, phantasmal killer and dispel exhaustion, among others. Now you know who to blame.
Expansions for Royal armies of the hyperborean age, and Dungeon!
Pimping for "Classic warfare", "Citadel", and "White bear and Red Moon".
Fiction: The Gnome Cache by Garrison Ernst. The first piece of fiction set in Oerth, and immediately I learn some stuff about it I never knew before. Ends on a too be continued, and I'm already interested in seeing what happens next, how Greyhawk developed while it was still young and vital.
An attempt to convert LOTR elves to D&D. Sylvan elves are common and magically nerfed, sindar are equal to standard D&D elves, while Noldor are twinked out. As you may gather, there is no attempt at balance at all.
The number of adverts continues to increase, but more welcomingly, the amount of fiction has as well. With the use of articles by freelancers, the tone definitely feels a lot more diverse. There is a quite substantial quotient of silliness, and it's obvious that many readers found the tropes of the day as lampoonable as we do. The days when things like the ecology of monsters and realistic ramifications of spells on society would become discussed are still some time away.
So here we are. The prelude is over, the warming up has finished, It's time to begin running this marathon in earnest. At 32 pages and $1.50, they expand yet again. Some terrible color choices here. Pale yellow-green text on bright pinky-orange background does not make for legible teaser text. While the art is better than the last SR issue, there is still extensive amounts of white space on the cover, and the dragon looks somewhat cartoonish. But then again, I seem to remember seeing early 80's books with similar art, so I suspect that style will be with us for quite a while.
It opens with an editorial spelling out their new intentions - to cease being a house organ (which of course they did successfully for over 20 years before WotC swallowed them up again) but instead to cover the whole roleplaying scene. Rates for articles and artwork coming next issue. Another massive historical change is the need for stamped self addressed envelopes. In this era of ubiquitous computers and quick easy copying, we forget that only a few decades ago, you had to make every copy of an amateur work yourself, and often people would send off their only copy to places.
In this issue:
Fafhrd and the grey mouser give their idiosyncratic opinion on roleplaying and the idea of other people playing in their world. A classic of the "pretend that characters are real in another dimension, and the author is merely writing down their stories" trope that would be used by many D&D authors in the future.
Dirt comic continues.
Converting the battle of the 5 armies from the hobbit to chainmail.
A decidedly arcane method of determining odds of success at a general task based on your attribute. Yeah, I can see why this one never caught on, compared to the simple roll d20 under attribute, possibly with modifiers, that most of us used.
Putting superscience into D&D: No real discussion of logistics or the cool issues that could arise from this here. Essentially just an excuse for jim ward to give us a load of *cough*magic*cough technological devices with a vague backstory about atlanteans. Hey, its a trick that'll work three decades later in Mage. Don't knock it.
Some discussions on language in D&D. Does feel very dated, and suffers somewhat from the humans are the only race with different languages problem. Features a cleric who was granted the ability to speak Were-St-Bernard, but who has never actually met a Were-St-Bernard to speak it too, which says it all really.
Fiction: The search for the forbidden chamber by Jake Jaquet. The trope of wizards with metaawareness continues in this silly little tale, featuring a recyclosarus, and whole load of other references and in-jokes.
A 4 page spread of tournament rules for Gen-con 9 by Len Lakofka.
Bullettes! Another monster that barely changed at all throughout editions, Cause what's not to love about a shark that can burrow through the ground with its fin out and then leap out and rip you to shreds. Plus it doesn't have any mechanical kinks that need nerfing, just straightforward combat skills.
Hints on mapping wilderness areas. Another thing that seems to have reduced in focus in recent years, but is still good advice that is still valid now.
An expansion for illusionists by Peter Aronson, bringing them up to 14th level and 7th level spells. Introduces those lovely annoyances color spray, phantasmal killer and dispel exhaustion, among others. Now you know who to blame.
Expansions for Royal armies of the hyperborean age, and Dungeon!
Pimping for "Classic warfare", "Citadel", and "White bear and Red Moon".
Fiction: The Gnome Cache by Garrison Ernst. The first piece of fiction set in Oerth, and immediately I learn some stuff about it I never knew before. Ends on a too be continued, and I'm already interested in seeing what happens next, how Greyhawk developed while it was still young and vital.
An attempt to convert LOTR elves to D&D. Sylvan elves are common and magically nerfed, sindar are equal to standard D&D elves, while Noldor are twinked out. As you may gather, there is no attempt at balance at all.
The number of adverts continues to increase, but more welcomingly, the amount of fiction has as well. With the use of articles by freelancers, the tone definitely feels a lot more diverse. There is a quite substantial quotient of silliness, and it's obvious that many readers found the tropes of the day as lampoonable as we do. The days when things like the ecology of monsters and realistic ramifications of spells on society would become discussed are still some time away.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
They go on-again, off-again about this. For several years you'll get some gaming articles on non-D&D stuff, then it'll dry up, then there will be some more until it finally stops well before WoTC even exists. You might get an occassional small article about another game but you'll never see anything extensive and never a mention of anyone that could have been considered a major competitor. It could simply be that no-one ever sent in an article on GURPS or Vampire or Harn or any of a number of things.
Ysgarran
Registered User
Denebian Slime Devil
"The Denebian Slime Devil" is a reference to the original Star Trek series, episode: "The Trouble with Tribbles".
"The Denebian Slime Devil" is a reference to the original Star Trek series, episode: "The Trouble with Tribbles".
amysrevenge
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