As was common in the 1990s, this is a "feature" issue, and this month's feature was elves. Always a winner, to be honest. The cover art featuring elves fighting a group of goblins and gnolls, comes to us via Lissanne Lake. She would go on to do work for White Wolf and the Affliction: Salem 1692 game.
The cover also tells me there is a Giant poster inside. But my issue doesn't have that. Neither does my Dragon DC-ROMs. A search reveals it to be a poster of the cover of Dragon #166.
Open to an ad for GDW's Dark Conspiracy. Nice to still see ads for other companies and games here. There is also an ad for "The NEW Easy to Master" Dungeons & Dragons Basic boxed set. I covered this set a while back and it is fun.
Letters covers the concerns over the lack of a proper African campaign setting or myths in D&D, which the new Egyptian art in the AD&D 2nd Ed Legends and Lore getting a particular call out.
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| Is that Isis or Freya? |
Dragon responds back with various excuses where a "Yeah, you are right, we should do better" would have been enough.
Roger Moore's Editorial touches on this in a way. Providing some forward-thinking on how we should deal with people who are different from us, be that other ethnicities or other species (in D&D and ShadowRun terms). He does point to Star Trek the Next Generation as an example.
More ads. Which, and lets be honest, are as fun as the articles. In this one for Waldenbooks (pour one out all you Otherworlds and Preferred Reader members out there!) and has some new D&D books on the way. One if the Ravenloft Van Richten's Guide to Vampires...and Other Undead. Ok so the content and cover changed from this to publication. Not the first time we have seen this. Nor the last.
We now get into our featured section on the Elves.
Servants of the Seldarine by Chris Perry covers and updates what we know about the gods and goddess of the Elves (and Drow) to AD&D 2nd Edition, with a bit of a lean in to the Forgotten Realms. I also have Monster Mythology sitting here on my desk for my next foray into the Realms, along with The Drow of the Underdark, so this is timely. This article predates Monster Mythology. While the information here for elven specialty priests will be superseded by newer books, the information is great to have and I'll add it to my cache of random Realms lore.
If You Need Help - Ask the Drow! from Ed Greenwood and Steven E. Schend also adds more to the total of Realms lore. This time, obviously, about the Drow. This article also ties in with FOR2 The Drwo of the Underdark. There is a map of the Promenade of Elistraee, the "good" Drow Goddess and covers her specialty priests in more detail.
And that appears to be it for the elves special feature.
Forum covers some of the topics of the day, as usual, mostly related to past issues. The topic de jour deals with "psycho-pathic players" from issue #172's Forum. I am unsure if the authors' mean "players" or "characters." The examples do lean in on characters, but the players have something to do with it. No advice is given really.
Friend of the Other Side Bruce Heard is up with his Voyage of the Princess Ark, now up to Part 23. If you love Mystara/The Known World as much as I do then these are great reads. Nothing sets the tone for the BECMI line quite as well as these do. There is fiction here, but enough playable crunch to keep me coming back for more.
The Convention Calendar gives us the run-down on the latest gaming conventions of the Winter of 91-92. None local to me though.
Ad for Vampire the Masquerade. Wonder if it will do well?
Spike Y. Jones has advice for "dressing up" your modern games in Propping Up Your Campaign. Though I can't see any GM wearing a suit and tie to a game session. Though there is some fun advice here. Among the things it suggests is raiding your little brother's toy box (with permission). A whiel back we did a huge cleaning and took a bunch of old toys from when the kids were little to WINGS. We kept anything that might be good for D&D props like toy dinosaurs and even some weird knock-off Pokemon and Yugioh toys we bought on a trip to Chicago's China Town.
TSR Previews covers what is new for December 1991 and January 1992. Your mail-in registration for Gen Con 1992 is on the next page. Early bird entries much be post marked by January 31, 1992.
The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia and Kirk) are back in The Role of Computers. Games covered are Heart of China (5 stars), J.B. Harlod Murder Club (4 stars), Phantasy Star III (4 stars), A-10 Tank Killer (5 stars), and Space Quest IIII (4 stars).
Michael G. Ryan gives us this month's fiction piece, Time for an Experiment.
Doug Niles is up with Role-Playing Reviews. He covers The Awful Green Things from Outer Space by Tom Wham and from Steven Jackson Games. This is an update of the same game that appeared in the pages of Dragon #28 all the way back in 1979. Niles still loves it. The Scotland Yard game from Ravensburger (German company fairly well known for their puzzles today) is a "whodunit" game where the players track down "Mr. X." It honestly sounds fun. He also covers the Battle of the Bulge game from who else, Avalon Hill.
Marvel-Phile is up with lesser known characters like La Bandera, Windshear, and Witchfire. Ok, so I did already know Witchfire.
Ah. I knew thos toys we saved would come in handy! Gregory W. Detwiler gives us prehistoric beasts in Playing in the Paleozoic. These are AD&D 2nd Ed monster stats, but not the full monster listings with Combat and Habitat/Ecology sections. Still. We went to the Field Museum and the Illinois State Museum more times than I can recall. So we have tons of plastic prehistoric monsters here. This one is fun!
Skip Williams is up with Sage Advice. This time, covering the effects of various wizard spells.
Not a review, not an ad, but somewhere in between is Novel Ideas by Marlys Heeszel. This time we cover the new R. A. Salvatore novel Canticle.
David Wise updates us on the AD&D Collector Cards in The Game Wizards.
DragonMirth has our comics for the month including Yamara and Twilight Empire.
Gamers Guide has our small ads. Ads for play-by-mail games (those will soon die out), music tracks for your games on cassette. Wargames West has their ad. A couple of ads look like they were printed out on a Macintosh pritner. Sign of the times.
We end with Robert Bigelow's reviews of new minis in Through the Looking Glass. At the time of this issue I had maybe one or two minis I had saved up for. I read this ad now on a desk covered in all the minis I have been printing from our 3D printer. Currently all the lords of the Hels and then some are sitting here waiting for a coat of primer.
So. A fun issue really, but the "special feature" was a little weak even if the articles themselves were pretty good. Loved the Paleozoic monsters the most really.
1 comment:
Ooh, the Paleozoic article sounds really interesting. I might have to seek this one out...
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