The Classic Dragon Reviews - Take 2
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Glyfair
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Dragon #28 August 1979
Our editorial this month touches on a longstanding issue in the RPG community, our reputation for being "freaky." He points out he has a friend who loves to read The Dragon but does not play the game. His opinion of what gamers like is not very good. Tim Kask points out that we should take the time to explain what it is all out, without proselytizing. He also points out that running around in a Nazi uniform or dressing up in armor looking for orcs only cements the image we have as being freaks.
Our first article this issue is a classic, "The Politics of Hell" from Alexander von Thorn. The article takes a midway point between the game history of Hell (at this point in time, which mostly comes from the AD&D Monster Manual) and the Christian history of Hell. It comes up with a story for Asmodeus taking over hell from Satan, and includes stats for Satan, Belial and Astaroth. It's an interesting take on Hell that attempts to cleave close to the Christian Hell, which is the opposite of what almost all other D&D sources do.
We have a combined article next to celebrate the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. We have "The Dungeon Masters Guide Developers Notes" by Jake Jaquet (as well as the rest of the crew) along with "And a Few Words from the Author:" by Gary Gygax. In the former article, Jake points out that with the DMG that AD&D becomes the first second-generation RPG. He also points out that anyone can just rewrite rules or put them in a new format, but the DMG goes beyond that and "elevates AD&D to a new plateau, in an evolutionary sense."
Jeff Leason's comments slightly lampoons Gygax's lexicon (even including the word "ippotomonstrosesquipedalian"). Len Lakofka describes what to expect from the book in his comments. On the other hand, Lawrence Schicks' comments touch upon the fact that the most important sections in the DMG deal with the balance of the game. He lists several key sections and states "Excessive tampering with any of these sections by DMs (except possibly alignment) or abuse by players could very easily cause serious imbalances
in the game." Contrary to the opinion of some, game balance was in the thoughts even in these early days of D&D (even though the approach was very different). Jean Wells is a bit less technical complaining about the stereotyping of elves as "flighty or frivolous." Allan "Top Secret: Hammack points out that DMs are told not to be a nice guy, but not to be too stingy. Mike Carr just makes some general comments about how much work it was, while James Ward even calls it the "Referee's Guide" (in caps!) while pointing out he checked out magic items first, and mentions he likes the rules on building castles and getting followers for it. Darlene Pekul closes with a poem.
Gary's article is in the form of an interview. When asked what a D&D player showing up at Gary's table for his first game of D&D should expect he states "the party is over. Things are tougher, more controlled" and the DM is given a far stronger framework that answers his questions far more more explicitly and extensively than other systems do (interesting given the Old School players now want to move away from that).
When asked why "rewrite" D&D he points out that the game wasn't designed for the current players of D&D. In addition to a stronger, more rigid framework, it is designed to slow down advancement so that games don't quickly grow beyond what the rules can handle (a problem with D&D per Gary). He points out that D&D was so flexible that people would go to a convention, sit down at a D&D table and not recognize the game as D&D. He also wanted a much larger work, but it needed to get out the door because people needed it. He even touches on the hot potato of bearded female dwarves.
Dan Bromberg writes "A Short Course in D&D" which is a short article on introducing the freshman at his prep school to D&D. He mentions that when they were done there were only 3 or 4 freshman who didn't know how to play. The first "class" had 60 people sign up for it. They picked 10 Dungeon Master's from the new players because they didn't have enough if they didn't. Each DM had 5 players except one, who acted as a wandering DM and ran his game for those players whose character's died. The big issues were players who died (too many people died to go into the one game, and because it was a class no one could leave until it was over) and paralyzation. Paralyzed players couldn't enter a new game because they might be cured, but couldn't do anything in their game because....well, they were paralyzed. The discussion on how to handle that is an early example of the current "save or die" discussions.
We still have some wargaming in The Dragon with "The Cavalry Plain at Austerlitz" and the related mechanical article "Simulating the Cavalry Plain". RPG articles may be pushing out the wargaming articles, but they are still hanging on. Later in in the issue is a "Armies of the Renaissance" article focusing on the English (very brief, less than a full page).
"From the Sorcerer's Scroll" this month has Gary tackle an issue even in these 4E days of less official alignments, "Evil: Law vs. Chaos." He defines evil as "the desire to advance self over others, by whatever means are possible, and always by the foulest of means possible." Most of the typical arguments are presented here given Gary's definition of evil. One interesting bit is that he feels there are a lot more powerful Chaotic Evil creatures, but because of their nature they have as much influence on the world as the Lawful Evil creatures do.
Allen Hammack's "Six Guns & Sorcery" is a preview of the Boot Hill to D&D conversion rules that will appear in the DMG (and are described as such).
"Fantasysmith's Notebook" starts with the basics for painting miniatures for your D&D games. This article spends a lot of time on picking out a figure giving a long list of miniature companies, including addresses, phone numbers, etc.
"Elvish Tactics in Fantasy Miniatures" bridges the D&D and wargaming routes of the magazine. As such it gets two pages, but some of that is focusing on painting you elvish miniatures.
"Up on a Soapbox" has Gygax waxing on "Conventions: The Manufacturer's View." He begins discussing the amount of comments about manufacturer's appearing at conventions. He throws out numbers in the beginning: half-a-million hobby gamers (not just roleplayers), at most 10,000 at a convention, and that even if these hardcore gamers spend much more than the average gamer that is only 2%-5% of the sales represented at these events. He points out that while goodwill is a strong reason to appear, and small companies may need the exposure, that if you see a large company at a convention it is because they love the hobby, not because they need to be there.
In the "Out on a Limb" letter section we start with a discussion about back-issues. The writer asks why all issues aren't in print, with the editor pointing out the realities of the situation (they print what they expect to sell to avoid storage, and reprinting isn't practical at all). We also get a letter with some suggested errata for an article from the last issue of Little Wars (which you may remember was folded into The Dragon). We get an amusing article on whether Metamorphosis Alpha animal need to use technological weapons, followed by the age old "what are hit points?" discussion. The writer point out that hit points are supposed to be fatigue, fighting and defending tricks etc and then argues that is an absurdity because they only heal 1 pt. per day and suggests hit points be reworked. The same author takes the random demon article and uses it to rant against random dungeons (rolling the treasure as being a life draining sword guarded by some pixies). The same author then argues for spell points arguing against fire and forget and then a few other things. We do a get defense (for example, if hit points really were sufferable damage than a character must gain mass whenever they gain a level to be able to take more sufferable damage).
Next, in my digital copy of the issue (from the Dragon Archive) we have the CLASSIC Awful Green Things From Outer Space. A game that appeared over 30 years ago as a magazine throw in is, I believe, still in print! Tom Wham has created many great games for TSR, and this might be his masterpiece.
Len Lakofka writes this issue's "Bazaar of the Bizarre." In my mind nothing here is too memorable, but we do get a Leomund appearance with Leomund's Plate & Cup.
John Mattson gives his thoughts on "Level Progression for Players and Dungeon Masters." Essentially we get a bunch of tables so that not only do earn experience for your character when playing D&D, but you earn experience and gain levels as a DM or player.
Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay present this issue's "Giants in the Earth." We have a science fiction character in Leigh Bracket's Eric John Stark, along with monster stats for his Northhound. He is a 15th level fighter, and the hounds have 4 HD. If you want to know more about this character, take a look at Paizo's Planet Stories that have reprinted some of these stories. We also get Welleran from Lord Dunsany.
We get another humorous Monty Haul story "Monty Strikes Back" from Jim Ward. Some weren't a fan of this sort of humor, and of course any fiction got complaints from some.
Tim Kask reviews Divine Right. Needless to say an employee of TSR wasn't going to give a poor review for one of their spotlighted games, but you can tell he really likes this. I wish I had picked up a copy of this because it did sound like an interesting game set in an interesting world. We also get a seeming random book review for America B.C.: Ancient Settlers in the New World. Jim Ward also reviews SPI's Sorcerer which he thought was fun, but not very strategic.
Our "Dragon's Bestiary" article is by Jake Jacquet who give us the "slinger." To me this was a pretty forgettable monster. Just a lizard with spines. We don't even get a picture of the creature, instead a lot of background of the creature and tactics to use against one. We also get a large paragraph stating that Gary has declared all "Dragon's Bestiary" creatures to be Official and as official as any monster in the Monster Manual (whatever that means). This leads to the caveat that the creatures must not be ultrapowerful.
In the comics section Fineous Fingers finally steals the palantir, but doesn't quite get away...we do see what the other characters are doing and it has the feel of building to a big climatic battle.
On the advertisement front we get the usual mix of roleplaying and fantasy ads. Judges Guild's ad even focuses on a TSR-80 Star Trek computer game (that was Radio Shacks early entry in the home computer market). Grenadier has a full page ad for official Gamma World miniatures (no pictures). Avalon Hill introduces 3 new games, Magic Realm, Wizard's Quest and the truly classic Dune (one of the highest rated games on Boardgamegeek). It wraps up announcing the Best of the Dragon will be available at GenCon.
And that's it for this month. I guess most spent it playing "The Awful Green Things from Outer Space."
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David Howery
Hero
I have a few older issues of Dragon, and #28 is the oldest one I own. It's amusing to look through it and read ads for new releases like the 1E DMG 
I only have this as part of the digital collection, but a friend had a physical copy. We played quite a bit of AGTFOS, although much later when the expansion "Outside the Znutar" or somesuch came out.
I remember reading this from the Dragon Archive a couple of years ago and feeling that Kask's points about people running around in silly outfits were spot on. Am I misremembering, or did he actually write a longer piece somewhere decrying the "stormfront" type gamers that existed even back then? Perhaps it was just a more recent post on Dragonsfoot.
I remember reading this from the Dragon Archive a couple of years ago and feeling that Kask's points about people running around in silly outfits were spot on. Am I misremembering, or did he actually write a longer piece somewhere decrying the "stormfront" type gamers that existed even back then? Perhaps it was just a more recent post on Dragonsfoot.
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