Anyone familiar with this issue will know why I am doing a One-Two punch of issues #75 and #76. Yes, it is because of the fantastic Devil and Nine Hells information included by the prolific Ed Greenwood.
But let's do this issue right.
A day at the beach is this whimsical cover celebrating Summer. Looks like it was made by Jack Crane. I am not familiar with the name, but the style is familiar.
Kim Mohan's Editorial covers just that, Summer.
Letters get into the problems with play-by-mail games and some observations about a recent review of Champions. There is praise for the Piercer article (praise I agree with) and some concerns about the Cavalier class. I am sure that will all be sorted out before long.
Nice big ad for the James Bond 007 game. I was at a game auction recently and there was a lot of James Bond material going for some really high prices. I have always enjoyed the Bond movies and consider myself a fan, but I have never played this.
Our first article from our issue MVP. Ecology of the Mimic covers these irritating creatures. It is just a page, but Ed manages to pack a punch into few words. Since I have (had) multiple copies of this issue, the water-damaged one gets sacrificed and added to my Monstrous Compendium.
We get right to the meat here with Gary Gygax in the odd role of "opening act" to Ed Greenwood. New Denizens of Devildom is this month's From the Sorcerer's Scroll and it gives us a look into what sort of devils we will get for the Monster Manual II. Six pages with 13 new devils. These will all appear in the MMII, but having this as some sort of Monster Manual 1.5 is still pleasing to me.
Up next is one of my all-time favorites. The Nine Hells, Part 1 by Ed Greenwood. It left such an impact on me that I have always set up my worlds with Demons more interested in Oerthand Greyhawk with devils more interested in Toril and the Forgotten Realms. I mean I am on the first page and Ed is hitting me with so much here. What are the Realms? How can I get a copy of Dragon #64 on a paperboy's pay? Even today they pact a punch. How much? I went right to the text just now and completely failed to mention the fantastic Larry Elmore art for this! So do we get? Fifteen pages. Five layers of Hell, Avernus to Stygia. And a total of 23 new devils are listed by layer. Ed did his homework and there are many names familiar to anyone that has read old medieval demonologies. The trick as always is figuring out who is a demon, who is a devil and who is a god. Bist for example seems to be related to Bast. Nergal was a Babylonian god, Lilis is a riff on Lilith, and others are names that appear in demonologies. There are things written here that you can still find in D&D books printed in the last couple of years for the latest system.
After that everything will seem a bit tame. Or will it?
Roger Moore gives us some new Gamma World monsters in Mutants, Men(?), and Machines. Gamma World 1st Ed monsters were close enough to Basic D&D to make conversion easy. Though the only one I ever recall using is the Hydragen, or the mutant diamond-backed rattlesnake, and the Nitrodjinn (cute).
Lew Pulsipher is up with Beyond the Rule Book which has style tips for good GMing. 10 Procedure tips (things you can do) and 10 style tips (how you do them). The advice is solid and can still be used today.
Nice ad for Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan miniatures. I would have freaked out to have seen today's 3D printers then.
Before Dungeon Magazine Dragon would have adventures and sometimes adventure contests. Here is one that won first place by Bob Waldbauer. Can Seapoint Be Saved? is an adventure for 4 to 8 characters of 4th to 7th level. It is a sea port and ocean/sea based adventure. Which is cool because I lack adventures of this type. I never read it because it was a potential adventure to be used for a possible ocean-based adventure we were going to do but never got to 4th level. I still think about it every so often.
Clyde Heaton is up with an article that always fills me with all sorts of curiosity and wonder. Even Orcish is Logical covers how to create an orcish language. Ever since I read Lord of the Rings I have be fascinated with ConLangs or constructed languages. I have toyed with the idea in theory, but never in practice. I don't have those kinds of skills. This article makes me think I could at least do the basics. I remember reading this one and some of the words were familiar.
The prolific Katherine Kerr is up next with our next language lesson, All Games Need Names. Hers is a much longer overview of languages and how they are made. Hers comes from the point of view of a novelist and storyteller, the same as Tolkien in purpose, but not exactly in practice. Could I make a language with both of these articles? Maybe. I don't know enough about the process to even know what I don't know. But I would like to try.
Great ad for some Atari 400/800 software. I always liked the Atari 400/800 computers, but it was the 1200 series that I really wanted.
Figure Feature: Humanoids covers humans in words and pictures.
A bunch of reviews are up. Ken Rolston is back with a review on the Runequest Companion in Companion Fill the Glorantha Gap. Visit The Solomani Rim a review by Tony Watson covers Traveller supplement 10.
Mike Lowery treats us with Tales Stranger than Fantasy or reviews of Mazes and Monsters and Hobgoblin, two fairly notorious fiction books about the dangerous world of Fantasy Roleplaying games. I have been meaning to read them both someday but there is always something else, something better on my pile to read.
UK Revisited: Games Fair 83 is a report from Gary Gygax.
SF/Gaming Convention Calendar covers the game convention scene of the summer of 1983 including a nice big ad for Gen Con XVI.
Two page ad for Asgard miniatures.
Three pages of What's New! with Phil and Dixie. Three pages of Wormy.
And tucked away, hiding in the back is five pages of Snarf Quest #1.
Pardon the pun, but this is a HELL of an issue. Even ignoring the new content from Gary. And the material from Ed. We still have two fun sections on languages, an adventure, AND the very first Snarf Quest.
I mean really. This was PRIME Dragon Magazine years.
Next week we go back to Hell.
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