Dragon Issue 57: January 1982

part 2/2

Random magic items: Ever thought it a bit odd that only certain shapes of magic item have certain powers? Want a bit more unpredictability in that area. This bunch of tables decouples item type and powers, so you can determine both randomly. Of course, since they have to be generic, the list of powers isn't the greatest. This could have been better, but it still adds a decent selection to my list which should keep players from finding the same old bits of treasure for a few more sessions. Just watch out for the cursed stuff, as ever.

The versatile Magician: A generalist spellcaster for DragonQuest with access to spells from all three colleges, only not to such great ability. This is the problem with games with rigid class roles. First thing gamers try to do when making new classes is to blur the existing ones in various combinations. Before you know it, you might as well have gone for point buy in the first place. This is not as well done as the Top Secret one above.

Giants in the earth: This months characters converted are C.J Cherryh's (she seems to be quite popular with the GitE authors. What's with that?) Morgaine and Vanye, Lynn Abbey's Rifkind, and Robert E Howard's Belit and Dark Agnes.  

The Wandering Trees: Another 16 page tournament module, this is obviously a wilderness one, which means druids and rangers get a chance to shine. Watch out for the phucking phooka, because trickster fae aren't funny when you're the butt of their jokes. Nice to see them once again expanding their repetoire and giving regular readers more options to challenge their players with.

Up on a soapbox engages in epic fail this month, with two laughable articles.
Brian Blume falls flat on his face at understanding human nature, and tells us that evil behaviour is completely ineffective in both real life and adventuring because no-one would trust that character, or continue to associate with them. They'd end up alone and friendless, if not locked up or dead. No-one intelligent could possibly enjoy playing an evil character. Er, yeah. Thats as dumb as the people who believe that good would never work because they'd help everyone who asked, even those who took advantage of them, never kill diliberately, and always forgive and give mercy to their enemies, no matter how obviously that would be a bad idea. Oh, and nice guys can't get chicks. No-one could possibly get any success or pleasure out of acting like that. Everyone would hate such an insufferable holier than thou prig. :rolleyes: Sometimes I dispair at people, I really do. Still, I suppose it's more entertaining than another bland common sense article.
Like this one. Roger Moore reminds us again that sexism and rape are bad things, mmmkay, even in fantasy worlds, and putting them in may cause discomfort in female gamers, and discourage girls from joining your group in the first place. No shit sherlock. The only people who don't know that already are candidates for the creepiest gamer thread, and they're unlikely to take it in, even if they do read this magazine fanatically every month and can quote every single optional rule from it.

Having been one of our most consistently entertaining regular faces for the past couple of years, Minarian Legends finally comes to an end. (or at least, says it does. We'll see if it stays gone.) I wonder what Glenn'll do next? He finishes off with an extensive chronology of everything since the great cataclysm, so you can see exactly when all the events detailed in previous issues occurred in relation to one another. Farewell. It's been interesting finding out about you.

The history of the shield: Another system free real world historical article. They've had a pretty wide range of shapes and construction materials over the years, as people look for the optimum compromise of protection against whatever weaponry is popular at the time, and mobility. Very little of which is reflected in the rules for games, unlike weaponry, which gets all manner of neat custom effects in some games. I guess offense is more interesting than defense. This article is certainly pretty inoffensive. Actually, that's doing it a disservice, as it is very comprehensive and well researched. But it is the kind of article you need to be in the right mindframe to enjoy.

Send in your entries for the 5th invitational AD&D tournament now! This year, it's the quality of your custom creations such as spells, monsters and magic items that are being tested.

The dragon's augury: Star viking is a tactical boardgame of interstellar raiding and pillaging. While high quality in components and appearance, it suffers from the fatal flaw that the sides are seriously unbalanced, making it virtually impossible for the vikings to win. Which is a bit rubbish, since they're the namesakes. The reviewer suggests some house rules to fix this, which adds a different spin to the article's purpose. Not sure if I should approve of that or not, but it certainly adds interest.
Champions is one of the first iterations of the Hero system. And it's only around a tenth the size of the bullet-stopping brick 5th edition would become. Which means there are still significant gaps in the powerset and some point cost to effectiveness issues. But even so, the effort to fun ratio might still be higher than more recent comprehensive versions. Hard to say.

Simulation corner: The importance of illustration in game design. This can have more impact on the comprehensibility of a game than you might think. It certainly has a big impact on popularity, as good graphic design is crucial in making first impressions. Of course, being able to afford good artwork is one of the things that sets the professionals apart from the enthusiastic amateurs. Another fairly common sense article with several good examples from the actual era.

The electric eye: We get the results from the survey a few issues ago. Unsurprisingly, it is very male and teen oriented, with quite a high percentage of people who program their own games. Apple is the most popular company (hah. D&D players are artistic types. How little things have changed in that respect. ) And cassettes are just beating disks as the preferred method of storing and loading programs. They'd like to see more programs and reviews in the future. Interesting. But only if you enjoy statistics.

Dragonmirth is here. Wormy expands on the wargaming theme that would become significant later. Still no sex in D&D in What's new, but we do get a little cheesecake for your enjoyment.

Even with the changes, this still feel very much like business as usual. They haven't dropped a beat.

Dragon Issue 58: February 1982

part 1/2

88 pages

In this issue:

Dragon Rumbles: Oh dear oh dear. We have our second RPG controversy making the news. Someone LARPing was shot by the police, who believed their fake gun was real. This is why you should use cards if playing around non-participants who don't know what's going on. And once again Jake seems more concerned with the damage by association that this could do to tabletop gaming than extending any sympathy to the LARP community. There is a definite air of "I told you so" to this entry, which I find a bit disturbing. This would be a very different editorial if Tim was still in charge. It is a shame that the TT and LARP communities got so separated, and I wonder how much of that is the fault of the people in charge of TSR in these early days. White wolf might have done quite a bit to bring them back together, but the damage was already done. It's silly to over fragment in an already niche market.

Out on a limb: A letter spotting the editing errors in Mad Merc 2 issues ago, which they admit too, and add further corrections of their own.
A letter telling them that they are too scathing in their rebuttals to many of the letters they get. They reply that they aren't half as scathing as some of the ones they get in. And at least they don't swear or use bad spelling and grammar.  
A letter asking them how the hell to handle premonitions of death when you don't know what's going to happen in game. They tell him just to fudge it and use your own guesswork. Sigh.
Another letter weighing in on the high level character debate, in support, and wishing they'd post more support for high level games. Which gets a strangely scathing reply in response. Kim obviously isn't a fan of high level games.
A letter asking for more house-rules and clarifications to the official rules, as for all its claims of mechanical rigour, there are still substantial amounts of vagueness and incompleteness. Next thing you know, people'll be asking for a new edition

Leomund's tiny hut: Len gives us a bunch of new cleric spells, as he and Gary felt they were still a little lacking in some respects. As this is done by official sanction, most of these made it into future books, such as water walking, dust devil, meld into stone and negative energy protection (at last, we have a counter to energy drainers). Yeah, this is a needed add-on. And it's nice enough to add a bunch of spells that are primarily useful for non-adventuring clerics, and an early synergistic metamagic spell, Combine. This is a definite step forward in terms of spell technology. Of course, that means wizards are likely to get a load of extra spells too soon. (Actually, I'm surprised they haven't thought of publishing those as regular articles before. It's certainly the kind of thing there's always demand for.) How are they going to keep fighters and thieves up? (oh, yeah, they aren't )

Dragon's bestiary: Sull are another floating jellyfish creature. A surprisingly popular D&D ecological niche, really. These ones are psionic, and fight by ramming rather than stinging. Interesting.
Beguilers are kyoot little magical mammals. Which I guess is the point. They're also pretty magically powerful, and their parts are useful in making magical items. But how could you be so cruel as to hunt something this adorable down. You'd get far more benefit keeping one as a familiar.
Magenta's cats are another wizard creation. Yay. Intelligent psionic cats. Now there's a rare and original idea :rolleyes: You can have one as a familiar too. It'd probably be more useful than another party member at low level as well.

Blood of medusa: Nice. One of the more intricate pieces of greek mythology gets another look at. When the original medusa was killed, pegasus and chrysaor sprang from her blood. And descended from them in various ways are the hydra, chimera, sphinx, and quite a few monsters that don't have D&D versions such as echidna and the blatant beast. This gives stats for quite a few of them, and is in general a good sparker of imagination on how to create your own set of unique monsters for your own campaign. Which is a pretty good thing, as it makes monsters more mythic, and not just another faceless challenge to kill for XP and loot. Bringing family into it always makes things more interesting, as Grazzt, Iggwilv and Iuz demonstrate. I very much approve.

Four myths from greece: The greek theme continues, and they give us stats for Atalanta, Daedalus, Deiphobe the sybil, and Chiron the centaur. Despite not being under any of the regular columns devoted to this kind of thing, they are all as disgustingly high in every stat as ever, even the ones not connected to their legendary accomplishments.

The dwarven point of view: Looks like it's that time again. They've been doing themed issues for the classes recently. Now they're starting on the various races as well. This is an official article by Roger Moore, and goes quite a way towards filling in D&D's implied setting. Yes, dwarven females do have beards. But there's a whole lot more to them as a race than just that. Why do dwarves become thieves? Why are they so obsessed with craftmanship? Why can't they become wizards? All these and more answered here.

Bazaar of the Bizarre continues the dwarven theme. The high anvil of the dwarves is a general craftmanship booster, as if they needed it. Still, you've gotta have dwarven made magical items, and they need help for that. The helm of subterranean sagacity does the same for their mining abilities. Pretty dull pair really. Don't you have anything more inventive?

Sage advice also gets in on the act with the short bearded folk.
Why don't ettins suffer a penalty to hit dwarves (they have two heads)
Can an ioun stone increase your stats above 18. Would this allow a demihuman to exceed their maximum level. (no and no)
Do dwarves have alignment restrictions (no, just tendencies)
What are the chances of my character being a sub-race. (If your DM allows it, you can be. Your race is one thing you don't have to roll to determine.
What's the maximum level dwarf clerics can be? (8th with wis 18, 7th with less)
How come dwarves can be psionic when their god isn't. (Good question. Perhaps the psionic ones have some human blood)
What does Moradin's worhipper alignment entry Lawful good (dwarves) mean? ( he might prefer his worshippers good, but he's a magnaminous deity who will tolerate dwarves of other alignments. )
Can dwarves use long or bastard swords one-handed? ( That's your DM's decision. I'm not going to give a ruling on this (how odd))

The gods of the dwarves: Ahh. Now this is a bit of canon that sticks for ages. Clangeddin, Dumathoin, Vergadain, Berronar, Abbathor! (unite and form!) The rest of the dwarven pantheon. Plus minor dwarven deities, and a new monster connected with them. Nice. If they keep this up for all the other races, 1982 is going to be a very big year in terms of building D&D's setting up. And we'll get to see tons of it first right here in the magazine. This makes me very happy.

This era of the magazine had a lot of art by Roger Raupp, one of, if not the, most underrated of D&D artists. His art defined a certain part of D&D to me - a more realistic take on the default milieu. He actually posted to this very message board not too long ago, and got knocked around. I was pretty disappointed by that, as I'd like to have seen some insight from him on the early-80s era of D&D, and Dragon in partiuclar.

Dragon Issue 58: February 1982

part 2/2

Fiction: In the bag by John Holmes. Boinger's back! Boingers Back! So lame I had to exclaim it twice. What's he up to this time? Having fun with a bag of holding. Some very creative application of D&D rules quirks here that I quite approve of. Wouldn't be surprised if this was another converted actual play, as it feels very much like a D&D adventure.

Spellminders: This months special feature. A nice little set of cut-out playing aids. When you cast a spell, just flip it over. Saves you scribbling on your sheet every time. Plus, by putting them in piles and picking them out, you can generate spell lists for NPC's quickly. But they are rather easy to lose. I guess that's not a problem for me though, as I can just print more.

Aiming for realism in archery: Oh, not this one again. Yes, the D&D to hit probabilities and weapon ranges aren't realistic. Will it help to introduce new longer ranges if you have to measure the chances to hit with d% and completely rejig the combat system. Frankly, at that point, you're better off writing your own system. You're never going to be satisfied with D&D's rules.

Bowmanship made more meaningfull: More of this as well? This is focussed on strength limits. A topic only Homer could make interesting. It seems like the original crowd of writers who knew D&D wasn't supposed to be realistic are getting crowded out by annoying newcomers. This is the problem with having to fill 80+ pages every month. Anyone with decent writing skills and persistence can get in.

Slicing into a sharp topic: An article on the history of swords to go with the one on shields last issue. And like that, it's pretty comprehensive, going from BC to the modern day, with plenty of details on how their construction evolved. But no bibliography this time. Oh well. It's still more interesting than the last two weaponry articles.

Being a bad knight: Glenn Rahman turns his eyes upon Knights of Camelot. Maybe you don't want to join the ranks of the round table. Maybe you want to play one of the dastards who laughs at honour and chivalry, and instead loots and kidnaps. This of course isn't supported by the current rules, so you need a new scoring system and victory conditions. This completely changes the game in a way that looks like fun, particularly if some players are good guys, and others aren't.

Anything but human: Can you guess what this is? Yup, it's a second set of charts for generating alien creatures in Traveller. Like the last one, this results in a wide selection of different body shapes, limb configurations, senses, and various special abilities. Which means in terms of actual power, races rolled will vary considerably, and many will need serious help fitting in on a spaceship. Just hope you get shapeshifting, because that covers up a multitude of problems Pretty much what I expected.

The dragons augury: Griffin mountain is a huge runequest supplement with tons of adventure ideas and setting detail contained within. Clearly written and well integrated, it's pretty handy, overall.
Star patrol is another sci-fi RPG. (there do seem to have been rather more of them around those days. ) It fails to be particularly standout, with several noticable flaws in the rules.
Trillion credit squadron is a traveller supplement that has rather a larger scale than most of their adventures. It provides rules for being at the head of your own muthafucking star navy! Plus mass combat rules, and more prosaic large scale details such as supply line stuff, taxation, maintenance and upkeep costs. Essentially, it's the traveler equivalent of the D&D Companion set domain management stuff. Which is something I strongly approve of.  
Beyond and Vanguard Reaches are two more traveller supplements. Seems like traveller is getting more products than D&D is at this point. It's certainly getting more reviews. What went wrong?

Off the shelf has lots of short reviews this issue: The pride of chanur by C.J.Cherryh sees her back and firing on all cylinders.
Guardsman of Gor by John Norman is, er, no better or worse than any of the other books in the series. You'll like it or you won't, and the reviewer definitely doesn't.
The death of a legend by Robert Adams is another book in the Horseclan series. Once again the reviewer seems pretty fond of his output.
The dark between the stars by Poul Anderson is a compilation of his short stories. Full of shocks and twists, it gets plenty of praise.
Whispers III (edited) by Stuard David Schiff is a compliation of the best stories from the magazine. Like the last 2 editions, it has a pretty good selection to choose from, so quality is not an issue.
Fantasy annual IV by Terry Carr is another compilation of various writer's work, from both the high, and horrific side of the fantasy genre.
Scarlet Dream by C.L Moore is another compilation. Focussing on her Northwood Smith stories, it takes what she considers to be the 10 best ones, and gives them some illustrations as well.

What's new tackles Love in D&D (but is saving sex in D&D until next month) for valentines day. Wormy picks up a plot thread that's lain dormant for quite a while.

Looks like we're starting another significant phase in the development of the D&D game. The official staff members are putting much more emphasis on building up a proper setting for everyone to play in, taking the sketchy descriptions in the rulebooks and giving them full-on motivations and histories, plus serious thoughts on their physiology and ecology. They've also realised that the AD&D corebooks they put so much effort into a couple of years ago aren't complete, there are plenty of things that the rules still need. I expect in a few years and supplements time, the game will have a quite different flavour if this goes on. 2nd edition's changes didn't come out of nowhere, and I expect we'll see many of them foreshadowed in the magazine quite some time before they go into common use.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309554This era of the magazine had a lot of art by Roger Raupp, one of, if not the, most underrated of D&D artists. His art defined a certain part of D&D to me - a more realistic take on the default milieu. He actually posted to this very message board not too long ago, and got knocked around. I was pretty disappointed by that, as I'd like to have seen some insight from him on the early-80s era of D&D, and Dragon in partiuclar.

Can't say I've found myself that keen on his contributions. They sometimes seem a bit unfinished, the faces in particular often just don't look quite right to me. But then, he also became the art director. That probably meant he had to whip up stuff quickly to fill in a gap when the other artists didn't have anything appropriate, or were late. And since the visual presentation of the magazine improved quite a bit under his tenure, I have to give credit to his directorial skills.

The vast majority of early Sci-Fi games just plain sucked.

Star Patrol is almost purely a lame Sci-fi personal combat system.

The two "standout" sci-fi games of the era are Traveller, Star Frontiers, and Starships & Spacemen... because they actually have rules for both ships and people, and more than just combat. Most of the rest got the obscurity they deserved.

Going through and looking at SF ads:
Logan's Run: PBM game
Star Rovers: RPG... Traveller heartbreaker...
Federation Space: board game; SFB universe. My copy is 4' away.
Asgard Minis: has some Travelleresque minis.
Traveller: It's amazing CT sold about a quarter million units with ads like p58...
Star Warrior: Computer RPG....

Quote from: (un)reason;309596Can't say I've found myself that keen on his contributions. They sometimes seem a bit unfinished, the faces in particular often just don't look quite right to me. But then, he also became the art director. That probably meant he had to whip up stuff quickly to fill in a gap when the other artists didn't have anything appropriate, or were late. And since the visual presentation of the magazine improved quite a bit under his tenure, I have to give credit to his directorial skills.

I can see what you mean by some of his stuff looking unfinished. However, he produced some spectacular stuff, such as a cover for Dragon 125 of the Battle of Camlann. His work had a look to it that was decidedly more grounded in the real world than other D&D artists - his work in the various green covered "HR" series of sourcebooks makes for a good example of what I'm talking about. I've seen his work turn up in other places, such as one or two of the modules for TSR's Conan RPG, and his abilities gradually improved with time. Now, he seems to be doing stuff quite different from his RPG days - http://www.wokendreams.com/index.html

By the way, the next issue you're due to cover - 59 - is one of my all-time favorite issues of Dragon. Matter of fact, it may well be my favorite Dragon issue of all of them. The Traveller adventure is so good, it still makes me wish Dragon had never shifted to being just a TSR house organ in later years. The cover is pretty blah, though.

Dragon Issue 59: March 1982

part 1/2

84 pages. Another traveller heavy issue here, with a new adventure and more articles and reviews. It is easily taking second place in terms of coverage at the moment. Was this reflected in it's general sales at that point?

In this issue:

Out on a limb: Another letter on the overpowered characters debate. While not overly in favor of that kind of ridiculous twinkery, the sender does think that getting XP for being hit isn't such a bad idea. After all, you learn as much from failure as success in real life.
A letter rebutting Brian Blume's soapbox piece about the undesirability of evil. Go you. We can't leave stupid statements like that unchallenged.
A letter in favour of weapon specialization. Proficiency shouldn't just be a binary thing.
A letter saying that dragon isn't overpriced for what it delivers. Have you compared the page count to cost ratio with actual modules and stuff?
Another letter asking for reprints, preferably in themed anthology form, collecting say, monsters, NPC's new classes, optional rules, etc in groups. They say they might consider that if there seems to be enough demand.

From the sorcerors scroll: Cantrips! Gary introduces 0th level spells to the game. These are exceedingly useful little effects, very open to creative use. Which is symptomatic of how powerful even 1st level spells can be, compared to magic of literature, but there you go. Another cool thing that would have a strong influence on later editions, making low level wizards more than just one shot and they're empty spellcasters. He also includes a new spell, Advanced illusion, and a new magic item, the philosophers stone, as they have been referenced in the fiend folio, but not printed yet. Man, this game really was stuck together randomly in some ways. An article that is both enjoyable, usefull, and influential. You can't have much better than that as a lead in.

Giants in the earth: This month's rather highly statted characters are Poul Anderson's Sir Roger de Tourneville, L Sprague de Camp's Harold Shea, Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers and Torve the Trog; and Clifford D Simak's Mark Cornwall and Sniveley. That's quite a large turnout.

Gypsies! Looks like someone was separating them from normal humans and giving them a whole slew of special powers long before the world of darkness did. (well, D&D had an entire campaign setting revolving around the buggers, I guess.) Fortunately, their powers here are vague enough that you can't make them into a PC race without a bit more work. Which just makes me sigh. If you're going to be tasteless, you could at least do so with a little discipline and consistency. Like the nazi's I do not approve.

Dragon's bestiary: The bleeder, a bloodsucking beholder variant that would make it into future monster manuals, gets introduced here. Frankly, most players would rather face this that a real beholder, as 10 straight attacks are far less dangerous than a host of instakills and subverters.
Stymphalian birds are another greek mythical monster. Vicious, with flight, hideous stench and disease spreading effects, they're the kind of creature that'll continue to be a problem even if you kill them.
Spriggans are odious little gnomes which can enlarge themselves. Another monster that makes into future official books, they are probably derrived from the same mythological source as duergar. Anyway, they make both nasty combatants and good tricksters, so watch your stuff around them.

The great kingdom and the knights of doom: Rob Kuntz gives us more official Greyhawk setting stuff. The demonic Knights of Dooooooom!, elite servants of Irvid (sic) the undying. Beware. The state has been taken over by evil of the worst sort. Anyone speaking out is a traitor. and must be eliminated, post-haste. Send help, urgently. No chance. There have to be evil states, otherwise what would the PC's have to kill? This is another plot thread that's going to developed further in the future. Are the demons and undead really neccecary though? Humans are quite capable of being complete bastards on their own.

Skitterbugging: Fiction by Gene O'Neill about a group of planetary surveyers. Aka those who go boldly where no-one has gone before, exploring new worlds, cataloguing new forms of life, etc. A rich seam of plots for adventurers, in other words. You never know what challenges you'll face each time. And they can be pretty weird, as in this case. They then put traveller stats for the characters and creatures in the story. A pretty good setup really. I quite enjoyed this one.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;309628I can see what you mean by some of his stuff looking unfinished. However, he produced some spectacular stuff, such as a cover for Dragon 125 of the Battle of Camlann. His work had a look to it that was decidedly more grounded in the real world than other D&D artists - his work in the various green covered "HR" series of sourcebooks makes for a good example of what I'm talking about. I've seen his work turn up in other places, such as one or two of the modules for TSR's Conan RPG, and his abilities gradually improved with time. Now, he seems to be doing stuff quite different from his RPG days - http://www.wokendreams.com/index.html

Interesting. He's certainly got quite an experimental side. Yeah. There are plenty of examples of artists producing stunning work, but not having the time to do so usually. Just look at the difference between Larry Elmore's covers, and his snarfquest work, or the amount of fine detail between Floyd & Nodwick.

Dragon Issue 59: March 1982

part 2/2

Exonidas spaceport: This month's module is a 16 page traveller one. This is less an adventure than a setting, giving you a location, and populating it with NPC's, but leaving it up to the GM to put an actual adventure in. Which is a bit annoying if you're used to using fully ready to go dungeons, but I suppose its another example of how they're trying to present different types of adventure. Whether it becomes just a slightly better fleshed out stop off point on route to somewhere else, or a new home base depends on your GM.

The halfling point of view: Part two of our demi-human series. Halflings at this point are pretty similar to the original Tolkien hobbits, with three subraces, and a strong love of security and comfort. Adventurers are very much a minority amongst them, but as they are tougher than they seem, they're hardly unsuccessful. Very little is added to their characterization by this article. I'm not very impressed.

The gods of the halflings: Halfling gods have never been as interesting as the dwarven ones. Blame Roger Moore for being short of ideas. Or blame the original source for not having as much depth and variety as the many myths of dwarves. Anyway, Sheela Peroyal, Arvoreen, Cyrollalee and Brandobaris all get their first airing here.  One big happy family, even if some of them do wander off once in a while. Pass the pillow and wake me up when dinner's ready. There's no danger here.

The toxins of Cerilion: Larry DiTillio takes a leaf from Ed Greenwood's book, and gives us stuff on what he's done in his own world. By giving poisons descriptions, onset times, and more inventive effects, things get a lot more interesting than just save or die, and players have a chance to recognize them by description without having to roll some kind of knowledge check. Which is good, because there aren't any in 1st edition. This is a pretty useful and entertaining article,

Make monsters, not monstrosities: From one regular writer to another. Lew Pulsipher gives us another article on ecology. Monsters ought to make sense in light of the rest of the world. So here's another basic primer on concepts such as the food chain, reproductive rates, and designing creatures powers to suit their tactics. And he does a pretty good job of it, not sticking too closely to real world stuff, and recognizing there are tons of fun different ways the ecology could work when magic is brought into the equation. Plus an adorable new monster, the starkhorn. Whosa tubby little telekinetic bloodsucker then. A pretty good article all round.

Figuratively speaking's photo's are rather larger this month, which is nice. We have a griffon, a paladin, a monk, some spies, warriors and wizards. Business as usual then.

The dragon's augury: Starfire III is another game in a returning franchise (if you want to look them up, starfire 1 was reviewed in issue 29, while starfire 2 was reviewed in issue 47, ) It builds upon the previous two to allow you to handle larger matters of economics and political maneuvering. This makes for quite an extended, open-ended game, which can go on for a long time, as you discover new worlds, face new challenges and deal with other players. Are you prepared to put that time and effort in?
Demonlord is a wargame of magic and conquest. It gets high praise for the quality of it's visuals, and generally seems fairly good.

Off the shelf: The best of Randall Garrett, edited by Robert Silverberg, is another compilation that does exactly what it says on the tin. 12 stories, each introduced by another famous author who likes his work (including issac asimov and philip jose farmer), should give you a good idea if you like him or not.  
Fuzzy bones by William Tuning is a continuation of H. Beam Piper's fuzzy series. Posthumous pastiches can go oh so very wrong, but this one seems to be respectful and interesting enough to please this reviewer.
The essential guide to home computers by Frank Herbet (yeah, that one) is a how too guide on buying, setting up, and starting to program them. He predicts that by the end of the decade, virtually everyone will have one. Pretty visionary, really.  
In iron years by Gordon Dickinson is a compliation of short stories from throughout his career. While individualy entertaining, they don't seem to have any particular common setting or theme. This keeps it from being a brilliant collection.
The art of Leo and Diane Dillon is given a full page colour spread of art from the book. Not just a load of pretty pictures, it also includes a history of the artists, and plenty of behind the scenes details on how they were made. It gets pretty high praise for this.

What's new is the only comic present this month, and is focussing on mini's. And I don't think we want those in our sex in D&D, do we. Dragonmirth is also rather small. What's up with that?

Another fascinating issue full of stuff that would make it into future books. There is a slight caveat in that an increasing amount of the articles are being done by house staff rather than freelancers. But I guess that's the way you maintain theme and editorial consistency. It's easier to work with people you know and can contact easily than strangers.

Exonidas Spaceport was one of the first "fully statted" highports in Traveller. It's one of about 5... total... in traveller's canon.

Dragon Issue 60: April 1982

part 1/2

87 pages. They did dwarves and halflings, now elves get their turn at having a special all about them. Surprised they weren't first really. Anyway, they have several other treats for us. It's april, and that means another april fools mini-issue. Plus we're served with another complete game. Amazing just how much they fit into these things. However will I get through it all? Same way I get through every issue. One page at a time.

In this issue:

Out on a limb: We start with a rather long and impassioned letter from Lew Pulsipher that was originally intended as an appendix to last issues article. In it, he rebutts the statement (from issue 54) that pelins are useless for a campaign. Damn well right. Just because they don't fit in a dungeon, does not make them useless as monsters. They have all manner of uses another generic humanoid can't compete with.
A letter from Gary sneering at recent attempts to make archery more "realistic", as that stuff does not improve the game's actual fun quotient.
A letter from Roger Moore pointing out a bunch of errors in recent issues.
A letter complaining about the publishing of multiple monsters with the same name, and repeating fictional characters with different stat's, as this prevents players from knowing what they're dealing with. Silly person. Players shouldn't know the stats and motivations of every monster anyway. That way lies excessive gamism and rules lawyering.

The elven point of view: Ahh, D&D's longest lived PC race. How they contrast with the second longest lived one. The usual tropes such as seeming aloof and whimsical because they are aware of impermanence of other things, connection to nature, magical skill, you know the drill. I have no desire to regurgitate it again.

The gods of the elves: Say hello to the rest of the seldarine. One of the largest and most complex nonhuman pantheons. Hanali Celanil, Aedrie Faenya, Erevan Ilesere, Labelas Enorath, Solonor Thelandria. All have pretty well defined portfolios beyond simply being elven, and showcase the wide range of concepts and associations the race can accomodate. They're as strong as I remember them being.

Sage advice continues its own contributions to the themed series.
What spells are considered charm spells? (spells with charm in their name, plus bards power of the same name, plus magic items with the same effects.)
Why are elven thieves always children?(That's errata. We've fixed it in later printings of the DMG)
Is Shield cumulative with mundane armour, or do you take the best. (you take the best of the two. You can't get AC-5 that easily)
If I'm reincarnated, can I keep my current class abilities. (Not if they're illegal for the new race.)

The half-elven point of view: Half-elves get a (rather half-assed) personality of their own. Given that they're more varied than even humans, due to their split heritage, this is rather a pointless task. Notable, however, at this point is the emphasis on half-elves as thieves, (what was with giving them unlimited advancement in this class?) and the floating of the concept of quarter, eighth and more diluted elven bloodlines. But Roger can't be bothered to write those up at this time. This article feels like wasted potential in general. They could have given half-elves a much stronger identity.

From the sorcerors scroll: Gary continues his extensive list of cantrips from last issue. He manages to finish off the list of wizard ones, but its still not over. Illusionists will get their turn next month. And then will we be seeing clerics get orisons, or is that a 3rd ed thing only? I guess we'll find out soon enough. As amusing as the last article.

Firearms: Ed Greenwood gives us more conversions of modern stuff to D&D rules, plus a history of firearms throughout the ages. Guns may be more powerful than swords and stuff, but for a long time they were rather unreliable. If you enforce that, It should keep things from getting out of hand. Plus it makes wizards less crucial to a party, when other people can supply the artillery. I think ed managed to strike the right balance here on an often tricky subject to integrate into the game.

Fiction: Wearwolf by David Rosenberg. A very funny little short story that sets up the premise of a world where loup-garouesque animal suits are commercially available, introduces a twist, and then knocks it down again, all within 2 pages. Quite the classic.

A quiz about the nature of D&D science. This takes the D&D rules and assumes that apart from that, real world physics applies. Amusing resultant effects happen. Actually, they aren't very amusing, because they're generally pretty dull. This is not a world of cinematics, it's a world where meticulous resource management is rewarded. Do we really want that? I certainly don't.

Quote from: (un)reason;310094(what was with giving them unlimited advancement in this class?)

While at that time I understood the reasoning behind level limits for non-humans (though I thought even then it was a crappy way to handle the problem of non-humans having powers and abilities humans don't have, and hated using it), I never understood, and still don't understand, why pretty much every race had unlimited advancement in the thief class. Halflings I could see, but why weren't dwarves or half-orcs given fighter (for example) as their unlimited class, or elves given magic-user? Perhaps the thief class wasn't seen by Gary as a campaign-wrecker at higher levels?

I've read the theory that high-level thieves, or non-human leaders of a group of their own species, aren't 'main characters' in the same way that a high-level warrior or wizard is. They'll be important in one city, or 'off to one side' in the mountains or the deep forest, but they won't be very involved in the D&D world's version of 'international politics'. And, supposedly, Gary Gygax only wanted humans to be 'lords' in this way.