The editorial this issue covers some changes to the magazine. They start by introducing the new assistant editor; Gay "Jake" Jacquet. Also this issue is introducing (in some cases re-introducing) several features. We now have "The Dragon's Bestiary" (formally "Featured Creature") & "Giants in the Earth" (my favorite all-time feature in TD). They also say they will be starting semi-regular features "Dastardly Deeds & Devious Devices" and "Bazaar of the Bizarre" (the old "Mighty Magic Miscellany" column expanded to include spells, and things like research methods, magical ink recipes, etc.)
We have a series of articles focusing on the wargame area, specifically the GDW game
System 7. "System 7 - Miniatures Meet Boards: What it Means for the Hobby" covers the game that appears to be a game with miniature rules that uses counters. This article has an interesting quote that appears to foreshadow the prepainted miniatures market. He points out that getting the equivalent figures for the counters in the game would cost over $1000 (about $2800 today) instead of the $7.95 the game costs (about $22 today).
"Price alone is not a sufficient comparison, as the figures quote cover
unpainted figures. I happen to enjoy painting miniatures, and do it to relax, as well as to derive enjoyment and satisfaction. However, I have better things to do with the next few dozen months of my life than painting figures."
This is followed by a review of the game, "System 7: Napoleonic Miniatures No Longer Mean a Second Mortgage" a Designer's Forum column, "System 7: Necessity is the Mother of Innovation" and a Q & A column "System 7: The Designer Responds to First Volley." Quite a bit of coverage for a wargame I've never heard of (not that I was ever a real wargamer).
Finally, we have the first "Giants in the Earth" column. This column gives D&D stats for classic characters of D&D related fiction. The introduction gives the ground rules which include the fact that because they come from different worlds from D&D that multi-classing restrictions don't apply and that all stats can have percentiles bonuses for 18's (instead of just Strength).
The first column gives stats for Jack Vance's Cugel the Clever as a 14th level thief, Karl Edward Wagner's Kane as a 30th level fighter/20th level magic-user/14th level assassin and Talbot Mundy's Tros of Samothrace as a 15th level paladin (the only one I'm not familiar with). The books characters in this column appeared in certainly could be added to the DMG's famous recommended reading list.
We have a
Starship Troopers variant article "And What of the Skinnies," a
Lords & Wizards article on "The Placement of Castles." This is also followed by a historical article "35th Anniversary of D-Day Remembered." Then we have "The Solo Berserker for William the Conqueror-1066." These definitely show the variety of articles covered by the magazine in those days.
Finally we get back to the D&D articles with "Chinese Undead" by David Sweet. This article gives us D&D stats for the lower soul, lost soul, vampire-spectre, sea bonze, celestial stag and goat demon. There is a single chart with stats and most undead only get a paragraph of description and special rules.
TSR's western game gets a variant article with "Boot Hill Additions,Revisions, and Trivia." We get a "fast exact hit location table" and a chart to show the handedness of your character and one to determine your size. There are a handful of other brief rules including a rule to run your horse to death.
A D&D variant column tackles possibly the most discussed element of D&D with "Another View of the Nine-Point Alignment Scheme." Essentially he tries to tack some absolutes in certain areas for each alignment. He lists whether they will keep their word, attack an unarmed foe, use poison (againt intelligent foes), help those in need, work in groups or alone, how they respond to higher authority and how they feel about organizations.
"The Book of Fate" may be the first article with a variant
deck of many things. This deck uses the major arcana of a standard tarot deck. An interesting tidbit of this article is that it seems directed mostly at OD&D, with some references to using it in AD&D. For example, the Magician refers to non-magic users merely getting a miscellaneous magic item from the
Greyhawk tables.
"D&D Meets the Electronic Age" is certainly a time-capsule article. The author refers to be fortunate to have access to a 4K memory, BASIC speaking computer. Even so, it shows a clear grasp of the possible uses of the computer in RPGs. He feels the computer should handle the mechanics, the DM the imagination. Their computer is programmed to handle "hit charts and damage allocation, name generation (for the thousands of minor NPCs), creating requisites and levels of nonplayer characters, handling the bookkeeping details on player characters, and a basic Dungeon that runs itself."
A short Design Forum article, "Hirelings Have Feelings Too" deals with giving NPCs personalities. His non-human recommendations are a bit stereotypical ("dwarves are a times quite greedy"), but this is still an article on not treating the NPCs as cannon fodder.
Another Design Forum article by Michael Crane, "Notes from a Very Successfu D&D Moderator" is your typical articles on tricks. He discusses creative use of the pit, Gelatinous Cubes (having an evil wizard leave jello cubes in his treasure room, and the PCs leave the room alone), dealing with poison using PCs.
Gary's "The Sorcerer's Scroll" column this issue is "D&D®, AD&D® and Gaming." He discusses roleplaying being used in wargaming for years. He then covers the evolution of the game. He lists innovations Dave Arneson made such as giving players individual roles to play (mentioning that Blackmoor was a just a small province on the borders of the "Great Kingdom"),allowing progression of expertise for the characters and using miniatures in the dungeon setting.
He mentions that in 1974 slightly more than 1,000 copies of D&D were sold. Today (remember, 1979) more than that were sold in a month. He also notes that AD&D isn't an expansion or revision of D&D, it's a new game. He says there is no more similiarity between AD&D and D&D than there is between D&D and it's various intimitators from other publishers. D&D is a very loose open framework, AD&D is tighter and more structured. He states that D&D has become a non-game because of the variations from group to group. He feels AD&D address this shortcoming. He states "
There is form and structure to AD&D, and any variation of these integral portions of the game will obviously make it something else." and "
While D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells, 43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed." He mentions that it also makes it easier to run organized tournaments, and discusses an "open" and "masters" D&D tournament. The below paragraph is certainly interesting today.
"
The advantages of such a game are obvious. Because the integral features are known and immutable, there can be no debate as to what is correct A meaningful dialog can be carried on between DMs, regardless of what region they play in. Players can move from one AD&D campaign to another and know at the very least the basic precepts of the game—that magic-users will not wield swords, that fighters don’t have instant death to give or take with critical hits or double damage, that strange classes of characters do not rule the campaign, that the various deities will not be constantly popping in and out of the game at the beck and call of player characters, etc. AD&D will suffer no such abuses, and DMs who allow them must realize this up front."
He states AD&D will eventually consist of the DMG, PHB, MM and "Gods, DemiGods and Heroes" and maybe one or two more monster books. He also says there will be various modules and play aids. In one speculation he speculates that there being a quarter of a million D&D players at that time is probably a conservative estimate.
He also addresses his taking on APA in a previous column stating they were insulting to TSR, D&D,
The Dragon and himself and he won't let such things go unanswered. He also states a future column will be written by Judges Guild about their contribution to the game. This is definitely interesting from a historical point of view, getting a history of the game and what he sees as the direction they intend to move with AD&D.
We have the first RPG published in the magazine in a Variant Game column by Kevin Hendryx called "Mugger!" Clearly tongue-in-cheek the players play muggers who gain experience from mugging and gaining loot from their crimes until they eventually get a seat in Congress (I swear it says this). Getting an original Van Gough<sic> is worth 500 xp, while 10 kilos of plutonium is the jackpot of 1000 xp.
Empire of the Petal Throne gets a variant with a table article on "Birth Tables and Social Status."
The first "Bazaar of the Bizarre" article is by Len Lakofka and is called "Blueprint for a Lich: Vampire’s Blood, Belladonna & A Virgin’s Heart Well Simmered." It's interesting that the classic magic item column starts with this. It's just a page, but chock full of rules and flavor. Becoming a lich isn't flawless, the potion might even work but leave you deaf, dumb and blind (why don't we ever encounter these liches in our adventures?)
Gary has a Design Forum article on "Putting Together a Party on the Spur of the Moment." Essentially its a group of rules and tables for quickly generating a party for a convention game. I find it interesting that he has them roll 4d4, discarding the lowest die for stats (must have meant 4d6, but 4d4 straight would be an interesting option). It list chance of having each type of magic item by class per level . A fighter has 7% of having a magic sword per level, but must ony choose one weapon per level. Since an axe has a 10% chance per level, he might choose to take the better chance.
We have a "Strength Comparison Table" by Thomas Holsinger, taken straight from the
Arduin Grimoire II (admitted in the column) going up to a 27 for Storm Giants and Titans.
In the review areas we have reviews for
Tribes of Crane (a play by mail game),
Ice War (and SF wargame),
Mercenary (book 4 of
Travellar,
The Battle of Monmouth (an American Revolution wargame) and some miniature packs from Grenadier's Wizard & Warriors line. We have a long review of
Battle Sphere.
The first official "Dragon's Bestiary" column covers the Barghest. They are described as one of the many deodands of Gehenna, and the most common. Otherwise, it's not much different than it is today.
Our last article is a quick bit on thieves called "The Thief: Deadly Annoyance" giving a few tips on playing the thief.
Our only full page comic strip this issue is Finieous Fingers, with Fred and Charley trying to become unpolymorphed by drinking random potions in the wizards laboratory. We have some classic one page strips this issue (my favorite being the "Close ranks, men, and brace yourselves for wandering monsters - I hear the sounds of six-sided dice being rolled.") We also have the winner of the cartoon caption contest, being "So I said, “Stop or I’ll shoot . . . Stop or I’ll shoot. . . Stop or I’ll shoot. . ." (an archer is facing a monk in mid-attack with dozens of arrows in him).
For notable advertisements have one for Origins '79 in West Chester, PA (I'm personally disappointed by how many Origins I missed in my area during the time I gamed because I wasn't aware they were held so closely, and those days are now long gone). GenCon XII gets the inside back cover, being held at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
4th Dimension, a chess like board game from TSR, gets a full page add ($9.95 then, the equivalent of about $28 today). I still have a copy of this somewhere I believe. Judges Guild has the first advertisement for its
Treasury of Archaic Names (still a staple at my table) for $4.95 (about $14 in today's dollars). The back cover has a full page ad for
Divine Right (a game I always wished I owned, but never did get).
We also have what may be the first ad for Martian Metals miniatures. Although I never bought any of these miniatures, the ads still stand out in my mind as creative and attention getting. Also, Grenadier Models has an add for official
Gamma World miniatures.
Even with the large wargame areas, this is still a rich D&D issue. The Sorcerer's Scroll is very important from a historical sense. The beginning of the Giants in the Earth column, plus the first appearance of the barghest and the first Bazaar of the Bizarre.
