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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glyfair" data-source="post: 2897738" data-attributes="member: 53">The Dragon #21 December 1978<img src="http://paizo.com/image/product/magazine_issue/dragon/21/cover_120.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />"Dragon Rumbles" starts out with Tim stating he's sure the fantasy crowd will be complaining about his issue's focus on Rail Baron.  He thinks it's an excellent game, and worth the space.  He also mentions that after the price increase was announced for The Dragon, another price hike for paper was announced of 13%.  He mentions that 60% of their cost in producing The Dragon comes from the paper costs, so the safety margin they included in the price increase is already gone."Search for the Nile Revisited:  Designer's Notes, Eratta, Clarifications and Response" was supposed to appear with last issue's article, but didn't arrive in time, so it is included in this issue.On the ad front, we have an add for a new module, this one called The Tomb of Horrors.  Apparently this was the official tournament module for Origins I.  The price increases are evident here as well, with a price of $5.49 (about $17 in today's dollars), but maybe not as it's the first fully illustrated module.  The blurb clearly hints at the lethality of the adventure, pretty much suggesting you may not want to risk your normal characters in this adventure."The Other Humerous Side of D&D: or, You Don't Kill Too Many Characters, Do You?" references an early article about humorous things players do in the author's area, and this is about the things DMs do in this author's area.  This is essentially an "listen to what happened in my game article."  Also on this page is the first caption contest, with the one-panel strip done by JD (of Fineous Fingers fame) showing a fighter with bow, and a monk with many, many arrows sticking out of him."Q:  What Do You Call a 25th level Wizard?; A:  Whatever He Wants." by Brian Blume is essentially another charticle with tables for generating long, impressive sounding titles (for example, I just generated "Viceroy, his most Majestic, Amazing, Sublimity Honor the Lord...")We have a short review of The Dragonlords, a board game by FGU.  Later we get a review of Olympica, a microgame from Metagaming.  King Arthur's Knights by Greg Stafford of Chaosium is reviewed.  This is more boardgame, and not the RPG that Pendragon will eventually be.The Design Forum tackles "Cure for the 'Same-Old-Monster' Blues."  It basically discusses using creatures from nature as your monsters.A D&D Variant article "Inflation in D&D???" which quickly discusses the idea of supply in demand.  Essentially he points out that if gold is valuable, it should be rare.  Next to it we have "Prophet Proofing or How to Counter Foretelling Spells."  It's a DM trick-type article, with such things has having medusa in the area where a clairvoyance spell is used, etc."Sensible Sorcery" is a D&D Variant article discusses spell research, and ways to keep it to a minimum and not allowing players to abuse it.We have yet another charticle, "Boot Hill Encounter Chart or What to do Between Bank Jobs."  The interesting thing about this chart is it seems to assume you are an outlaw (2 deputies are after you, deputy shoots at you, etc)."Encounters with Personality or How to Amuse the Dungeon Master" has some nice examples of NPCs with brief personalites, even if the names are a bit trite (Blarg, Tarky Helm-Splitter, Gary Benderlack).From our British friend we have "The Hall of Mystery:  A section deep in the Greenlands dungeon" from Don Turnbull (the primary person behind the original Fiend Folio.)  It has the description, and map, for a level in a dungeon.Gary Gygax covers one of TSR's new games in the aforementioned "Rail Baron, A Short Course for Empire Builders" with tips for the game.  The warning in "Dragon Rumbles" was because this article hits 5 pages.In another contest, The Dragon announced the first "International Dungeon Design Contest" (with "dungeon" defined as "a generic term for modular adventures").  1st place is $100 Gift Certificate (about $300 today), 13 issue subscription to The Dragon and payment for publication.  2nd & 3rd get lesser prizes, as well.In an oddity a D&D Variant article "That 'Other' Dungeon' gives the alternate rules for Dungeon! used in the Gen Con XI tournament.  It's odd because it's not D&D, but the boardgame based on it.Here we also have a brief review of The Silmarillion, which is reasonably on topic.We have another adventure of Monty Haul in Jim Ward's "Monty Strikes Back."   In this episode we have a typical adventure with their group about about 20th level characters.  For the final encounter they are described as unlimbering their magic items that are rarely used "Tim took out his 'Eldest Worm Orb'; Jake took out his, 'Sword andEye of Vecn'; Robert took out his'Rod of Seven Parts', Brian summoned his 'Servant of Leuk-O'; Dave (II) grabbed his “Horn of Change”; Dave (I) summoned his flying (“'Throne of the Gods'; Tom took out his 'Sabre of Kas'; just to follow suit and not be shown up by the rest of the boys; Ernie grabbed his 'Orb and Sceptre of Magic', and I took out my 'Stokes Co’Agulator'."For our comics, we have a few strips in the issue, and an episode of Fineous Fingers (with Mergatriod the Dragon making his first appearance).  Wormy is MIA this issue, however.</blockquote>

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