This Old Dragon Retrospective: The Road to the Witch

 Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch. But not in the way that you might initially think. 

My witch class and Larina went through many design phases and had many influences, as I have talked about here, but the truth of the matter is her genesis and my witch class's evolution owe a lot to the pages of Dragon Magazine, all long before Dragon #114 landed on the store shelves and ultimately my gaming table. 

So for today's "This Old Dragon," I am not going to do a deep dive into one issue, but rather the issues between Dragon #85 and Dragon #114, 1984 to 1986, not just some of my prime AD&D playing years, but when I did the most work on my various classes.

Since this is also a bit of an "In Search Of..." post in tone and flavor, I'll explain why this search is important to me.

Now, keep in mind, I did not read every Dragon when I got them and think, "What can I add to my witch?" I *DID*, however, read each new one and thought, "What can I add to my game?" As it turns out, I found the articles on magic, clerics, and new monsters the most useful. 

Now I did go back when I got my Dragon CD-ROM archive and look specifically for witch-related and witch-adjacent material. But that was in the 2000s. It helped inform my Basic Witch, but a lot of those concepts were already present in my earlier works. It was, however, a wonderful bit of archaeology. 

Class is in Session

To refresh everyone's memory and to set the stage from 1983 to 1987, I was in high school in Jacksonville, IL (no, not Jackson...exactly). During this time, I played in a regular group where I took turns on DM duties, usually about half-and-half. I had been working on a few new classes: The Healer, The Sun-Priest, the Necromancer, and The Witch. I saw each as related classes where clerical and wizard magic were blended. The Healer never really manifested the way I wanted, though I have played a few healers from the Werper family. The Sun-Priest eventually found life as an AD&D 2nd Edition Kit, and, using the rules as written, I have played some Sun-Priest-like characters in both D&D 4th edition and D&D 5th edition. Again, usually members of the Werper family, often sister-and-brother healer-and-Sun-Priest teams. The Necromancer finally found some life as the Profane Necromancer in my Monster Mash book. 

The witch, however, has been my runaway success. When I got the above classes into a playable state, each had what we would call today an iconic character. There was Celene the Healer, younger sister of Johan II the Sun-Priest and Paladin. The Necromancer was Magnus, and, really, the most unassuming of them all was Larina the witch. Of the four, she went on to true immortality here.  I suppose, though, the writing was all there. Luna Mondgott, Johan's and Celene's mother, was played as a witch using Cleric rules, and Johan's wife, Cara, was played as a witch using Illusionist rules. The witch was more or less inevitable for me.  

But the form it took was not. 

So let's look at one factor that shaped the class, and the character: the pages of Dragon Magazine.

Dragon #85 -May 1984

Why am I starting with this one? Good question. This is the first Dragon I ever owned and used regularly. It was in the pages of Dragon that I saw additions and changes to rules. They were not set in stone; they could be changed. I had already created many new monsters by this time, and the idea of new classes seemed not just reasonable, but actually required.

Dragon 85 was where I saw this. This issue gave me the highly valued Cleric Collection. Clerics were my main class of choice, and I played them less like holy men and more like occult scholars. So, less fighting, holy man, and more Van Helsing. 

This is also the first time I saw an ad for the Witch Hunt game.

Dragon #86 - June 1984

Gods of the Suel Pantheon and the Dragon Deities helped me rethink what gods could be in D&D terms. This issue also gave me new familiars to consider and the idea that they were not just a special pet. The article wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. The Ecology of articles were always great because it made me feel like there were "monster naturalists" in the various worlds studying these creatures.

Dragon #87 - July 1984

The big one here is the Ecology of the Dryad. I know this was a catalyst and one of the reasons why Cara and Larina are both redheads; Red hair = magic. The review for Stalking the Night Fantastic and the ads for Chill made me realize that horror in RPGs was a good option.

Dragon #88 - August 1984

This is another important one. We got Wee Jas ("Wee Yas" or "Ouija") as the Witch Queen, Goddess of Witches and magic. Plus she looked great. THAT was Larina's look for a long time. How could I have not fallen in love with her? And she is Lawful Neutral. The same alignment Larina is to this very day. I may not have known all my witches yet, but I knew who their goddess was. 

Dragon #89 - September 1984

Very helpful article in Many Types of Magic since it shows already that many types of magic are already baked into the system; it is just a matter of finding a spot for witchcraft. The ads for the Time-LIFE Enchanted World prominently feature their first book, Witches and Wizards, which gives witches legitimacy in the pages of Dragon. 

Dragon #90 - October 1984

This features the witch-coded Incantatrix. The name is related to Enchantress, and her ability to steal spells gives her a witch-like feel in a world already filled with wizards. I tried Cara out as an incantatrix for a bit, but didn't care for it for her, and she went back to being just an illusionist. Dragon is certainly circling around a witch-shaped center of gravity for me. Speaking of charm, this issue also has the definitive list of creatures that can be subject to the Charm Person spell. 

Dragon #91 - November 1984

We go darker here with a new demon from Gygax and more devils from Greenwood. Certainly material for masters of the occult.

Dragon #92 - December 1984

Double hit again from the Gygax/Greenwood tag team. Gary has more to say about clerics and I am all ears. This helps me figure out things for my clerics and paladins and ultimately my healer and witch classes. On the other end of the magic spectrum, Ed gives us more spells and has the audacity to introduce me to the Witch The Simbul without explaining anything else about her! 

Dragon #93 - January 1985

Real-world witch hunts come to D&D as told in Gary's “Thinking for Yourself.”  In fake worlds, “The Making of a Milieu” gave me strong advice about building a world where witches would live. This article, along with the two organization articles for Top Secret and Gamma World, gave me something I could build for Chill right away. Which in turn gave me more for D&D and witches. 

Dragon #94 - February 1985

The fiction section featuring Baba Yaga is a great addition to my witch mythos. Not a lot ton of information, but enough. The Ranger revisions also show me that classes don't have to be a static concept.  

Dragon #95 - March 1985

This one is useful as a perspective issue. Tolkien, Forgotten Realms material, non-combat experience, magic-item creation, and the religious response to RPGs in the form of DragonRaid, all feed the broader question of what fantasy gaming is allowed to be. The Denis Beauvais art for the fiction, Desperate Acts, gave me a character who was a contemporary of Larina and part of the same adventuring group. 

Dragon #96 - April 1985

I have to say, I never had much use for Dragon’s April Fools issue each year. This one was no exception; there was little in it of interest to me for the witch class, or to Larina in particular. The only thing that stands out is the FASA Star Trek vessel Ginny’s Delight. Which I low-key loved. It may not have a direct bearing on the witch, but then again, my reading and gaming habits were not so easily compartmentalized. Whether it was fantasy, horror, the occult or superheroes, I did not see them as distinct categories. The starship is part of the same milieu as all the other science fiction, and the like I was into back then.

Dragon #97 - May 1985

Another Pages from the Mages article. The implication here is that wizards are dynamic; they research, they record their work. And spell books are treasure, maybe worth more than gold by weight. 

Dragon #98 - June 1985

If nothing else, this issue reminds me that we are not, and certainly were not, bound by books. There is a lot of talk of playing RAW and rules orthodoxy these days; back then, that is not at all how we did it. There was a lot of experimentation. The “Creative Magic Items” article reminds us of this. 

Dragon #99 - July 1985

This issue covers Unearthed Arcana, and how it will change AD&D. This is a sign to me that AD&D IS a game that can evolve. The Neutral point of view helped me figure out how to play a Lawful Neutral witch when, say, a chaotic Neutral one would have been easier.  

Dragon #100 - August 1985

Classes are on Gary's and Frank Mentzer's mind with the Druid-Ranger, which seemingly breaks the rules. Well, if it is good enough for these two, who am I to argue? The Forum reminds me, though, that there are still people who refer to additions and changes to rules as "illegal."  

"City Beyond the Gate" showed me something I already knew in theory, but this was great in practice; that AD&D is not confined to the quasi-medieval world. Now I remember playing this adventure; I remember many of the characters in it: Johan II, Nigel, and I know Larina was not there.  Too bad; she would have loved it. Marvel-phile gave a strong write-up in Dr. Strange and was a good model on what I wanted for my witches. The variant magic system was also quite fascinating. 

Dragon #101 - September 1985

The biggest draw for me here is the Creature Catalog III with some witch-adjacent monsters. "Sorry, Wrong Dimension" from Mike Manolakes covers alternate realities, a feature that would be important to Larina's many futures. 

Dragon #102 - October 1985

I have not done this one for a "This Old Dragon" because I don't have a copy anymore. This one does have some items that I considered important, but not in the typical manner. Ads for The Complete Spellcaster and Elvira/Chill had my attention. The "Valley of the Earth Mother" was good, but not one I ever ran.

Dragon #103 - November 1985

A look into the future here. Gygax discusses future editions of AD&D and the game's evolution. The article on the saurians catches my interest, but not for the witch. 

Dragon #104 - December 1985

The articles on the thief class are interesting and showcase the class beyond the charts and numbers. I will use similar logic to pull the witch further away from her "magic-user" roots. 

Dragon #105 - January 1986

Our first issue of 1986. I mention here that I recall January 1986 starting out really cold. I recently taken these memories to help form a new Jackson, IL adventure featuring my frozen misanthrope The Refrigerator, but more on that later.  "Seeing is Believing" by Geoffrey Meissner covers different types of invisibility. While this had immediate uses for my witch class, it served my DM and his Riddlemaster/Adept psychic classes even more. The magic in our worlds stopped being a monolith and became multiple expressions. 

Fraser Sherman's "A world of difference: The parallel concept expands gaming horizons" was the right thing at the right time for me, as I was really exploring the idea of parallel worlds at the time. This was the height of DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," so we really made extensive use of these ideas. Larina would later be in contact with some of her alternates via her Mirror, or "Shards," as I now call them. 

Dragon #106 - February 1986

Issue #106 matters to me because of "A Plethora of Paladins." That article showed that the paladin need not exist only as a single lawful-good archetype with an evil mirror image. There could be variations. There could be holy warriors shaped by alignment, ethos, patronage, and worldview. For someone building new classes, that is an important lesson. It says the game's iconic roles can be opened up, examined, and rebuilt.

That matters to the witch because the witch was never just meant to be the "distaff magic-user" or the "evil cleric" or the "NPC spellcaster from a fairy tale." She needed her own space and reasons to grow. Sure, I never used a lot of these paladins; I was pretty happy sticking to the Lawful Good ones and my single Anti-Paladin NPC, but I was thrilled to see them. 

"The Laws of Magic" and "Casting Spells for Cash" both feed into the idea of magic as something with rules, culture, economics, and social consequences. That connects nicely to Larina's earliest personality: a witch pretending to be a wizard-in-training. She is not merely learning spells. She is learning how magical society works, what it expects, what it permits, and how to pass inside it while being something slightly different.

Dragon #107 - March 1986

I have not reviewed this one yet, but it is sitting here next to me. I will get into it in detail in a future This Old Dragon, but the artifact from this one is a reference to Laurana from Dragonlance. That matters because Larina’s name almost certainly owes something to Laurana. Did I get the name from this issue? Probably not. It is much more likely that it came from reading the Dragonlance novels themselves years before. But #107 shows the name, or close enough to it, was in the air at exactly the right time.

This is one of those small pieces of character archaeology that I can't prove, but that's too interesting to ignore. Larina was not named Laurana, but the resemblance is obvious, and the timing is right. Somewhere between Dragonlance, Dragon Magazine, and my own teenage need to make the character mine, Laurana became Larina. In truth, Sinéad owes her overall look and part of her history to Laurana. 

Dragon #108 - April 1986

I would not call Issue #108 a major witch issue, though "Cantrips for Clerics" is an entry worth a mention. I had come to view divine and semi-divine spellcasters with more variety in mind than the run-of-the-mill cleric; one could see that same design impulse at work in the healer, the sun priest, the necromancer and the witch.

Clerical cantrips suggested that even minor magic could help define a caster’s identity. There is no need for every effect to be a miracle or some purpose for the dungeon or the battlefield. A few well-placed blessings, charms, and practical bits of magic speak volumes about how a character stands in relation to the supernatural.

This applies to witches as well. It is not enough for a witch to be judged by her top-tier spells; she must have that quality in her minor workings, too. Hedge witches need recognition as well and need to work into my systems of magic.

Dragon #109 - May 1986

While I can easily point to Dragon #114 as a major issue for the witch, issue #109 might have been more influential. While I had a fairly good grasp of the math behind XP per level values, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh’s "Customized Classes" becomes the article where I can test my ideas. It was a pivot point in my home games. I created the witch, healer, and sun-priest XP values that spring. My DM Grenda used it to create his various Riddlemaster/Adept classes. That summer was spent playing and playtesting a lot of new classes. This article showed me not just that I could build a witch, but I could build a good one. 

The Barbarian Cleric by Thomas Kane even gave us a shaman-like class. Great for my ideas on what a primitive witch could be. 

Dragon #110 - June 1986

The Cult of the Dragon was a HUGE influence on the development of cults and heresies in my game. In fact, my very first notes on what would become my Scaled Sisterhood Witchcraft tradition were written down here. Ed also gives us some more background on Elminster himself and some spells.

The Norse Myth articles gave me Angur-boda, Grid, and Gullveig. All described as witches and all of whom have played some role in my writings and development. 

Dragon #111 - July 1986

The magic focusing items grabbed my attention right away, and certainly West Haven owes a little bit to the magical city Malachi. 

If DC was dominated by the Crisis on Infinite Earths at this time, Marvel had their Phoenix Cycle. Phoenix gets a write-up from Roger E. Moore and later on Supergirl gets one as well from Greg Gordon. Why are they important, well both are described as two of the most powerful beings in their respective universes and both to a degree had impacts on my later game writing in particular the work I did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Dragon #112 - August 1986

I just covered this one last week. The big thing for me was that this was the first issue that let me know there had been a witch class in the pages of Dragon, and I was not creating something that no one would want.  I would need to wait for Dragon #114 to see it, but that was only a couple of months away; it wouldn't be until I picked up Best of The Dragon (Volume 1) that I saw the witch from Issue #5. And it would be even longer before I got the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection and then saw the witches from issues #20 and #43.

By the time Larina appeared in my notebooks in July 1986, most of the ingredients were already there. Dragon #112 showed me the magazine had older witches in its own past, and Dragon #114 gave me the first Dragon witch class I actually had in my hands.

Dragon #113 - September 1986

The last issue before the witch. The cover alone was enough for me since the swordsman reminded me of my Johan III character.  "Clout for Clerics" is a good article for expanding the Cleric's role and giving them some followers.  James Yates gives us lesser clerics and man-at-arms followers for clerics and explains why, out of all the classes, they should have them. I expand on these ideas for covens. 

There is also a great article on Hades. 

Dragon #114 - October 1986

And here she is. I have said so much about this particular issue that I am at a loss as to what more I need to add. So, here are some links to things I have already said, including Larina's involvement.

• This Old Dragon, #114
• Character Creation Challenge: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition
• Skylla: Dragon Magazine #114
• Larina Nix for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Dragon #114 version)

The Larry Elmore art of the "enchantress" became my stand-in art for Larina for decades. While this was the first Dragon Magazine witch I read about (like many others) it was not their first, nor as you can see from above, the first time witchy topics were discussed in the pages of Dragon.

In retrospect, there is an inevitability to Dragon #114. Not because TSR was always going to publish a witch class, but for over two years I had been reading in that direction. The magazine had put before me its share of god-bound clerics and odd familiars, goddesses of magic and spellbooks with a past, not to mention alternate and custom classes, the monsters of folklore, parallel worlds, magical cities and the sort of horror that lingers at the periphery of fantasy. Come October 1986, the pieces were all laid out on the table; I picked them all up and reassembled them into something more Larina-shaped. 

Special Mentions

While these do not fit inside the publishing window for the most part, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Best of Dragon vol. I, II, and IV.

Best of The Dragon

This first collection reprints the witch from The Dragon #5. Great little bit of archaeology and shows that the witch has been haunting the pages of Dragon (and D&D) since the very beginning.

Best of Dragon, Vol. II

This one gave me the Anti-Paladin and the Healer class. Not to mention two different ninjas. I learned that classes are not a static thing.

Best of Dragon, Vol. IV

This is where I first saw the Death Master NPC class and compared it to my own Necromancer. I liked the Death Master quite a bit, and I actually approached Len Lakofka about it later on. We stayed in regular communication until his death.

Not all of these shaped Larina in particular or even my witches in general, but they did contribute to the environment in which my witches could grow, and Larina could be created and grow. 

That is why I say Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch, but not because one article created her. Dragon gave me permission, examples, arguments, monsters, spellbooks, gods, and the idea that classes could be built, tested, changed, and made personal. Dragon #114 gave me a witch. The previous two years helped make sure that when I finally found her, I already knew what to do with her.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. What I Learned from 40 Years of Larina

The Witch Queen and the Girl in Homeroom: What I Learned from Forty Years of One Character

I created Larina in July, 1986. 

That sentence feels simple enough, but it carries a lot of weight. It means she has been with me through six editions of D&D, most of high school, college games, new systems, abandoned campaigns, resurrected notebooks, lost files, new editions, new worlds, and more than a few versions of myself. She has been a magic-user, a witch, a sage, a horror heroine "last girl", a multiversal constant, and occasionally the person in the room who knows far more than she should.

I have known her longer than my kids have been alive, and I met her 15 months before I met the girl I would one day marry.

I wish I could remember the exact date, but failing that, and for reasons that make sense to me, I'll say it was 40 years ago today. July 6, 1986.

At some point, a character stops being just a character sheet. At some point, she becomes a mirror to what I am doing at the time. 

And Larina has always been a mirror.

Larina was not my first character. She was not even my first "witch" character. But over the years of playing her and using her in many games, she quickly became a favorite of mine.

If you like, you can read some more about her here on her own page and all the versions of her I have posted here over the years.

The Character You Start With Is Not the Character You Keep

That first version of Larina was nothing special at the time. Not really. She was a "witch" but only in the respect that she was a collection of ideas I had about witches. Some notes, some ideas, a rough draft. Her class at the time? Magic-user, 1st level. This was July 1986. I would use her a few times, but my main "wizard" was Phygora-Cronus. He was, and let's be honest here, my Doctor Who-ripoff character. A traveler who messed with the lives of others. Phygora did eventually become his own thing. But that very, very first version of Larina barely saw any adventures. Phygora even stopped traveling to be Larina's "advisor" at the magic school. 

Larina 1st Ed AD&D Character Sheets

Still, there was something that drew me back to her. She saw some play, but not a lot really. I am hard-pressed to remember any of her adventures between that summer and the Fall. 

Then came October 1986 and the release of Dragon Magazine #114 with its new take on the witch class. I really can't overstate how much that issue affected my ideas of how to play a witch. That put an end to her as a "fake-wizard". I made her into a 1st-level Magic-user/1st-level Witch right away with a brand-new sheet. I figured out that she had been to magic school, but the tuition was too much to keep up. Sound familiar? I was in the same boat with one school, so I took my second choice. Another mirror.

So I gave her a backstory to fit. She was working in the school library to make ends meet, and she picked up her witchcraft on the side. Libraries have always been where I study things on the edge of belief, so it was only natural. It was another mirror of my own situation.

That little bit of backstory did a lot more work than I realized at the time. It explained why she knew things she was not supposed to know. It explained why she had access to odd books, old languages, half-forgotten rituals, and dangerous scraps of lore. It made her something other than a spell list. She was not just a student of magic. She was a student of forbidden shelves, closing-time whispers, and books that should probably have been locked up better.

Looking back, that is where Larina really started to become Larina. Not by virtue of better hit points or power, but because she was the one who knew where to find the book. She was the one with the answers. 

This early Larina was hardly the best version of herself. Beginnings seldom are. But she had a spark. Her core was there.

Every Edition Reveals Something Different

I have done this with all of them. I currently have Vera Rook sitting on my desk, and I have six character sheets for her, maybe seven soon. I showed you all this as an experiment with Elowen Hale.  Vera began with a concept and then character options were used to support that concept. Elowen was built by looking at character options across the games and choosing the concept that fit them all. Every game and edition offers a chance to redefine a concept. With Elowen and Vera, it was a matter of deliberate design; with Larina, it has been a decades-long process.

Larina, 2nd Edition AD&D, the Witch Priestess

I have some 75 versions of her in posts for various systems now, each one a test to see if I could make a proper witch. For example, in AD&D 2nd Edition, she took on more of a priestess role. I called it her Wiccan side (to put it in modern terms) as she found her faith. The mechanics were simply there to put it on paper. 

And in a way, it was another mirror: while she was getting deeper into the supernatural, I was embracing my atheism and skepticism. There is a contradiction in all this that I have always found amusing. The further I put distance between myself and belief, the more exacting I became with hers. She became the High Priestess of faith and belief, while I rejected such ideas for myself. 

Perhaps that was her utility. She let me get at faith, ritual, gods, spirits, and the like without having to put my own stock in them. Where I was skeptical she could be sincere, she could stand in the circle and invoke the Goddess in earnest while I was on the periphery with a notebook to put in a word: "Yes, but what are the game terms for that?"

If you want an honest appraisal of my witch writing, there it is. I don’t need to believe in a thing to see its power.

I will ask her different questions depending on the game. D&D wants to know what she can cast. A horror game will ask what she has endured to survive. Superhero games make you wonder how much power she truly has. Sci-fi asks what she knows of the universe. Modern horror asks what she does when the monsters are not locked in some dungeon but are down the street. And so on. Every answer tells me how to play her and how to bring her into whatever comes next.

Converting a character is never a mere numbers game for me. You can have your fun making sure a 7th-level spell translates to the equivalent power in another system, but that is not the work. The task is to determine what the game deems important. Some games are about combat or social standing, others about trauma or whether you can afford rent and still be at the ritual on time. When I convert Larina, I am not just changing her stats; I am letting the game have its say with her.

Forty years on, she still has something to say.

Long-Lived Characters Become Mythology

Larina has been with me long enough to take on a mythic quality in these worlds. My players and my kids’ players are familiar with her. I have minis and 3D prints of her in the game room, art on the wall, even a Monster High doll someone went to the trouble of modifying for me (people love this post). Here, you will hear her name in the same breath as "The Simbul," "Circe," or "Tasha/Iggwilv."

I won’t pretend she is on their level in the annals of game history or literature, but at my table, she occupies that space. She is one of the names the young witches talk about in hushed tones. She is the woman who has already had her bout with the thing you have just come across, the one whose notes you find in the margin. She may be of assistance, or she may decide you are not ready for the truth.

Tea with the Witch Queens by Brian Brinlee

That is what mythology is. Not official canon or a publication record. It is what a name means when enough people at the table understand it.

It also means the little details start to matter more. Her red hair, the purple clothes, the dragon tooth necklace, the Triple Moon Goddess tattoo, and the scar below her left collarbone. Or the way she will tell you her birthday is Halloween when in fact it is the 25th of October. Things that were once just bits of color are now like relics. 

After a while, the details are no longer decoration; they are signs.

And because Larina has so many versions, those signs are what tell me she is still Larina. The stats can change. The edition can change. The cosmology can change. She can be in Mystoerth, Jackson, West Haven, WitchCraft, NIGHT SHIFT, Wasted Lands, or some far future starship-adjacent nonsense that probably started with me watching too much Doctor Who and WAY too much Star Trek. But if she is still the woman with the books, the questions, the occult knowledge, the stubborn compassion, the terrible habit of putting herself between people and the dark, and biting her nails, then she is still Larina.

Larina by Jeff Dee

She Taught Me What a Witch Is

Every Witch class I have ever written has Larina’s shadow somewhere in it. Sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden, but always there. Elowen is an "adopted daughter"; Vera is a dark shadow; Marrissia is the mother of hers that devours.  Even Sinéad, to a degree, is "what if Larina had been raised in the Forgotten Realms?" All these witches are part of what I call her extended coven. Which is more growth for her because from the start she was a solitary witch learning via books she borrowed from her library. 

My witch books don’t just appear out of a vacuum; they are born of a lived-in experience I have with her. One feeds the other. Another mirror.

Larina made it clear to me that a witch is more than a woman with magic, a druid who has taken to the indoors, a wizard with better jewelry, or a cleric with the wrong holy symbols.

A witch is a relationship.

That was a revelation when I first saw it. Which is odd since what I was looking at were my own notes and writings. But there it was. Was it my writing or hers? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

The witch is a relationship. With power and place and memory. With old gods, false ones, and things that were never gods. With a coven, be it made of ghosts, familiars, past lives, a very patient cat, and the odd book.

That informed my design. A witch needs magic, but she also requires the rituals, the pacts and taboos, the marks and the consequences. She needs to be able to heal, curse, bind, and banish. And most of all, to know. Intelligence is important. Wisdom informs. But it is Charisma that sets it all into motion. 

Larina was never at her finest when she was flinging the largest spell in the room. She was best when she could tell you what the monster was and where it came from, what book made a passing mention of it, and why you should have heeded the old woman at the start of the adventure. 

That is the witch I keep writing.

The witch girl and the Witch Queen

A Good Character Can Outlive the Campaign

This is something of a big deal. Groups disband, people move on, editions are replaced, files go missing, and books get sold. Most campaigns have an end. Yet some characters endure.

Larina is my means of keeping old games from being set in amber. She is continuity, if sometimes of a confusing sort. I have four timelines for my main computer to make sense of what she has been up to since 1986, which is no small chore. In fact, trying to account for her "lost years" and sort out one of those timelines is what first put the notion of an updated Advanced Witches & Warlocks in my head. If you look at one of my playtest notebooks, you will find nothing but character sheets of her from various stages and reams of notes. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Why did she begin to embrace witchcraft as a practice and a religion more?

Will any of this make it to print? No, not all of it. Does it inform what does? You bet.

Those campaigns are history now. I am the only one left alive from some of them. But she has been here with me all along, my witness to the fact that it all happened. She was the chronicler of those long-lost campaigns. The people who were there are gone, but I have the notes I kept in her voice still tucked away in one of my 3-ring binders or stapled to a character sheet. It is strange when I read something like "Must talk to Killian" or "Find out what Morgan Highstar knows." Notes on Larina's sheet by her (by me for her) directed at characters who can no longer answer. Another mirror: Larina, when she is a GMPC or DMPC, often acts as the party's translator or chronicler. There is a certain sadness to it, and a comfort as well. Knowing that she is still bearing witness to deeds of glory.

Old campaigns are like ghosts. You hold on to the recollection of the character deaths and the lucky rolls, the big set pieces and the arguments over rules, not to mention the maps we were sure we would have for all time, only to mislay them. And the dumb jokes. But memory is no good at archiving; it will let go of what you once deemed important and hang on to the odd bits.

She reminds me that those games happened. Those people sat at those tables. That we cared very much about things written in pencil on loose-leaf paper. That we spent entire afternoons arguing over what a spell could do. For a little while, the world was bigger than the room we were sitting in, and the room we were sitting in was bigger than the world outside.

Larina is not the campaign itself, but you can smell it on her clothes.

The trick with an old character is not keeping her exactly the same. It is letting her change without letting her become someone else. Larina from 1986 is not the same character as Larina from 2026, because I am not the same either.

She has become something of a creative engine for me. What she needs is what my books need. It may sound mad, but then again, I once put in some time as a QMHP at an institution for schizophrenics, so perhaps it rubbed off. Or I just know this character well enough to tell the difference between what works and what I might want.

The WitchCraft RPG made clear to me the distinction between her magic and her psychic side, and I carried that over to Ghosts of Albion with its separate Magic and Faith abilities. From her I got the Wicca and the Witch Priestess for Advanced Witches & Warlocks, and the Witch Queen for Liber Mysterium and my 3rd Edition book. She was the six-year-old in my AD&D Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks. 

Which is the strangest thing of all: the adult Witch Queen and the girl in homeroom with glasses, wearing her watch on her right wrist, are one and the same. Not in any tidy, linear way, but in the manner of a dream or a myth, or an RPG you have been at for a while.

The child answers the call. The teenager comes across the book. The young witch puts up with the vampire. The adult who becomes the teacher. And the Witch Queen who becomes the warning. 

And somewhere in there is a guy (also with glasses) with a notebook, trying to figure out what all of that means in terms of saving throws, spell levels, and whether or not this really belongs in the next book.

Forty years on, and Larina is still around. 

I don’t hold on to her out of stubbornness (though there is a lot of that too); she has a way of showing me something new. Just when I think I have had my fill of her lessons, another one of her turns up. A stat block in a folder I have not opened in ages. A picture. Some class feature that is there only because, at some point, Larina did that at the table. A spell that is logical in a way only she could make it so.

Maybe that is the real lesson.

The best characters are not the ones who stay frozen on the page. They are the ones who follow us out of the dungeon, through the years, and into whatever strange country comes next.

For me, Larina has been a witch, a mirror, a witness, a test case, a mythology, and a creative engine.

Not bad for a little 1st-level magic-user girl from July of 1986.

Larina by Claudio Pozas

The Mirror Shard: The Dark Anima

This one is a little bit different than other mirror shards. Those typically cover concepts I can use in both my Occult D&D campaign and my Jackson, IL campaign, even if they appear different in each. 

I have talked about this before, but it is worth bringing up again here because it is part of Larina’s genesis.

My first foray into psychology was in the mid-80s. I went the way of most people and began with Freud and then Jung. Freud had his Id, Ego, and Superego, all very serviceable concepts. Jung I found a bit more philosophical, or at any rate more to my liking as a writer and a gamer. From him I took the archetypes, the Shadow, synchronicity, the Animus, and the Anima. That was what resonated. 

The Anima, in Jungian terms, is the inner feminine image in a man’s psyche. The Animus is the inner masculine image in a woman’s psyche. Now, I am not going to pretend this is modern psychology, or even particularly good psychology by today’s standards. This is armchair Jung, filtered through a teenage gamer in the 1980s who was reading books he only partly understood and immediately turning the interesting bits into D&D characters.

In a way, that was all I really needed then.

But the notion of the Anima held me. Jung would have you believe it is the inner feminine in a man’s mind (the Animus being the woman’s inner masculine). I wanted to know what mine looked like, and not in the pedestrian sense of an ideal type of woman. I was after something darker and more symbolic. If the feminine side of my imagination were to step into a dungeon with a spellbook and some secret she wasn’t in a hurry to share, who would she be?

Larina was the answer. Or perhaps she was there first, and I put the question to her later. In college, I worked on my undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees in Psychology. All the while, I had Larina by my side. Informing me, informed by me. I read Jung in highschool, I read it again in college and discussed him in History of Psychology classes I was in. Her first "publication" may have been a paper I wrote about the Anima with the Witch as archetype. That would have been at least 1989 or 1990. 

She is not simply “the girl character.” Sure, I like witches, and I have played a lot of women over the years, but that is not why she is here. She was curious and intuitive. She was compassion made into a weapon. She was the part of me still open to magic while the rest of me was being weaned off it. A useful tension.

As my Anima, Larina, is not merely soft and healing. She is dark. Not evil; there is a distinction. She is the witch standing at the periphery of the firelight; the one standing in the liminal space. The one who tells you there is more to it than you see. The librarian who will hand you a cursed tome because you need the lesson. The red-haired woman in purple who smiles when the monster misnames her.

Forget the seductress or the evil queen; they are too convenient and too cliché. The Dark Anima is your guide to the underworld. Think of Beatrice with a black cat, or Persephone once she has memorized the map of Hell. She won’t rescue you from the dark; she will show you how to navigate it. She is Innana and Ereshkigal. 

That is why she has a habit of appearing in my work as a sage, a mirror, or a teacher. She is the voice in my head that says the monster is a symbol, a wound, an old story in new clothes.

It also makes for good company with Nigel. He is my Id, all impulse and violence, the one who will put a blade to the problem and leave the philosophy for another day. Larina is his interpreter. She understands his danger and his necessity. Between them, I have Phygora as Animus, Johan as Super-ego, Retsam as Ego… a full psychological adventuring party in my head. It may not be entirely healthy, but it has given me my share of characters.

But Larina is the one who has stuck.

The Anima is no ordinary character. She is a mirror. She shows you desire and fear, and the things you put aside for being inconvenient. And as the person looking in the mirror changes, so does she. In a very literal sense, she has been my mirror, reflecting my turn away from religion, my skepticism, my fondness for libraries, my urge to codify the occult for a game, and my fascination with women who know more than they ought not to.

She is not me. But she is mine in a way my other characters are not. 

I suspect that is the reason for her forty-year run.

This Old Dragon: Issue #112

 It is August, 1986. I am getting ready to start my senior year in high school. My car was a 1977 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, burnt orange. Its redeeming qualities were that it was built like a tank, it had an amazing stereo system thanks to my older brother, and it had a V8 engine. Of course, anytime I drove it over 50 mph, it would shake like crazy.  The "Glory of Love" by Peter Cetera is the number one song (I can't even recall it). Aliens, the action sci-fi sequel to the horror sci-fi movie Alien, is number one at the box office. And on tables and bookshelves everywhere is This Old Dragon #112.

Issue #112 had two standouts for me, and I can recall my reaction to them both very clearly. More clearly than the rest of the magazine to be honest. But that is getting ahead of myself.

My issue is falling apart, but it does make scanning the cover a lot easier. It is another great one from Daniel Horne featuring some dwarves and a flying dragon. Though, given the magazine's content, a dinosaur would be better.  

Letters covers the issues of the month, with some criticisms about the "Death of an Arch-Mage" adventure from the previous issue and "The House in the Frozen Lands" from issue #110.

Kim Mohan's editorial is a brief overview of what he will discuss later.

The Forum has a long discussion about how "realistic" it is to have strength limitations on women characters. The author argues that in practical concern there is no difference between the genders. And counters why we are using "realistic" when it comes to dwarves, elves, and halflings anyway. This is a very good point. 

Dawn of a New Age by Kim Mohan covers the future of Dragon Magazine. I think by late 1986 we saw that there were changes coming to TSR. Dragon changes happened first, followed by D&D. In particular, Mohan himself would be out before year's end. We learn that in addition to the Ares section going away there will be less Science Fiction in general, but more coverage of computer games. This was a trend among all game magazines of the time to pull back and only support the in-house systems.

Our big feature is Dinosaurs by Dragon regula Stephen Inniss. He covers quite a lot of beasts here and gives a lot more detail than what we find in the Monster Manual 2. I have to admit I have always wanted a Dinosaur bestiary for an RPG system. AD&D (like this one) or D&D 5 or anything would be great, really.

Joseph R. Ravitts is up with Revenge of the Nobodies. Or giving the normal humans their due. This would later work well as a basis for the angry villager rules I would use in Ravenloft.

Up next we have one of the articles I remember very well. The very first The Role of Computers from the Lessers; Hartley and Pattie. A few points. First, this one is not copyrighted by them independently of Dragon. Something that we will see in future entries. Secondly, they give us a history of games. Uh...Ok. But does this audience really need this? Third and most importantly, Rogue. After I bought a Color Computer 3 with an INSANE 128k of memory and an external floppy drive, this was the first game I bought for it based on this article alone. And I played the hell out of it. It didn't have the graphics of, say, Dungeons of Daggorath, but it made up for it in terms of re-playability.

Dragon MVP Ed Greenwood is next with Cloaked in Magic, or a bunch of new magical cloaks from what I assume was Elminster's wardrobe. We learn now that Elminster is not just a sage, but also a mage, maybe even an Archmage! Who knew? I can't be 100% sure, but I have my suspecions that Nigel's and Larina's matching Cloaks of Shadows were created after reading this article. Larina would ahve been about a month old at this point and Nigel three years.

An ad for GURPS. One of the "WHAT THE @!¢%*# is GURPS" ads. Making it a very early one.

Also a nice two-page spread for the DC Heroes RPG.

Armor, Piece by Piece by Matt Bandy is for people who want a lot of detail in their armor for D&D but don't want to actually play Rolemaster. What I remember most about this article is I couldn't read it and not have The Tubes "Piece by Piece" off of "Love Bomb" going through my head. Yes. I bought that album and I might be the only person I know outside of a couple of friends who did. Though I am sure someone loved this article and planned out their armor with a lot of care.

TSR Previews is up for October 1986. Of note, the DA1 Adventures in Blackmoor module is on the way. As is I10 Ravenloft II: Gryphon Hill. The Queen of Spiders super module is on the way as is Day of Al'Akbar. I think I bought all of these.

The next big article I remember well is The Dragon Magazine Ultimate Article Index. This covers 10 years of Dragon magazine. Compiled by Jean Black & Wally Black and edited by Kim Mohan, this was a treasure map. True, I did have access to all the locations, but I could make a wish list of articles I wanted to read. I took a highlighter to it and had it all marked up.  And there, on page 64 there was a mention of a Witch Class and a Witchcraft supplement. All I needed to do was get copies of Dragons #5, #20, and #43. Well...according to the ad on page 40, back issues didn't go back that far! Little did I know I only had to wait a couple more months for issue #114. Of course, I had already started my own witch class by this point. But it was exciting to learn that others had also tried their hand at it. 

The dinosaurs continue for a few pages after this. 

William Tracy gives us Dire Invasion, Rom and the Spaceknights, or at least Marvel's comic version of the toy line for the Marvel Superheroes RPG. I liked the idea of Rom and the Spaceknights; it felt a little like the Green Lantern Corps to me, but that is fine. I didn't like the Dire Wraiths, though. It did make me want to do my own dire wraith as an advanced version of the AD&D wraith. 

David "Zeb" Cook is next with For a Fistful of Credits, or more gear to buy for the Star Frontiers game. I know I used these in my own game. This was as close to official content as Gygax writting an AD&D article. 

Convention Calendar covers a few cons for the end of the summer and start of fall 1986. This includes Gen Con. 

Gamers Guide has our small ads, including two artists who will draw your character. Dragon mainstay Anvil Enterprises, and a new one, Walter Moore of Alabama. There is also a small ad for a new game magazine, White Wolf Magazine. I wonder what happened with them?

Dragonmirth has our comics. And we get entries from Snarf Quest and Wormy.

So yes, a pretty solid issue. The Dinosaurs and the Dragon Magazine Index are a must-have, really. Though the index here has been replaced by the Dragondex. 

I spent some time reminiscing over computer games and played some Rogue and Baldur's Gate 3 today, the first and last D&D-adjacent computer games I purchased. They are light-years apart in terms of complexity. Curious note: today in Rogue I was killed by a hobgoblin; later on in Baldur's Gate 3, I was able to make some trades with the hobgoblin Blurg for some needed potions. 

The other big thing for me was that this was the first issue that let me know there had been a witch class in the pages of Dragon, and I was not creating something that no one would want.  I would need to wait for Dragon #114 to see it, but that was only a couple of months away; it wouldn't be until I picked up Best of The Dragon (Volume 1) that I saw the witch from Issue #5. And it would be even longer before I got the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection and then saw the witches from issues #20 and #43.

If you are curious, here is what I said about White Dwarf #80, out that same month.

Mail Call Wednesday: D&D Basic & Expert in Print

 The BEST version of Dungeons & Dragons in back in print now. The Moldvay Basic book and the Cook/Marsh Expert book are now available in Print-on-Demand formats from DriveThruRPG.

While maybe not as crisp-looking as the originals from 1980/81 are, they are still easy to read and great to have.

The books do compare well, and they allow me to keep them on my desk without worrying about ruining what I call my "museum pieces." 

The Expert book even has a nice little bonus.

A reprint of the 1981 Gateway to Adventure TSR Product Catalog. Though I suppose if I am being nit-picky, this is the one that came with the Basic set, since the one with the Expert set had a picture of Isle of Dread. 

The Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Dungeons & Dragons Expert books will run you $15.99 each. More expensive than 45 years ago, but I guess that is to be expected.

I just got these last night and have not shown them to my kids yet. I am sure my oldest will now want his own copies.

Dice not included.

Now, let's see the BECMI books in print!

Jackson, IL: Pride (In the Name of Love)

Yes, I *DO* know what the U2 song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" is about; it also fits here.  

Photo courtesy of the Peace News Archive/University of Bradford, Special Collections

With Pride Month here, my thoughts keep returning to Jackson, IL.

I’m not talking about the real Jacksonville in Illinois. I mean my version of Jackson from Night World, a college town in the Midwest during 1985-86, where the Veil is thin, the high school is haunted in both mundane and supernatural ways, and some students are witches, psychics, monsters, monster-hunters, or just unlucky enough to know the truth.

It keeps reminding me of Monsterhearts.

I have said before that what makes Monsterhearts a good game is its take on the horror of adolescence. There is the “monster of the week” variety, to be sure, but more so the intimate horror of being sixteen and unsure of your own identity. Or you know who you are, but you are not ready to put it into words. And if you do, you find others have decided they can define you for you.

Many horror games only hint at this, but Monsterhearts really understands it. The monster is a metaphor, but it still feels real. The original World of Darkness does this well, and so does the Buffy RPG, but a lot of games focus only on fighting the monster.

That’s the foundation Jackson, IL is built on.

In a NIGHT SHIFT Night World like Jackson, IL, supernatural characters are outsiders by nature. A witch notices things others miss, a psychic hears thoughts that are better left unsaid, and a werewolf knows what’s inside him might break free at the worst time. There’s the vampire with his hunger, the ghost with unfinished business, the faerie who never quite fits in, and even the monster-hunter, marked and haunted by what he knows.

You could say the LGBTQ character in a mid-80s setting is in much the same dramatic position. (Side note: I don't recall what the preferred term was back in the 1980s. So I am just using what we have today.) They might know something true about themselves that the rest of the world either can’t or won’t see. They have to make judgments on who is safe to confide in, pass in one room, and be open in another. There are friends in the know, adults with their suspicions, enemies who will make a weapon of a rumor, and strangers who would never get the whole story.

Now, I am not going to suggest that it is the same as being a vampire. I have no desire to flatten one experience into another or make the LGBTQ experience into a cosplay. But fiction, and horror in particular, has always had a way with the outsider. The one standing outside the circle tends to see it better than anyone in it.

That is the sort of thing I want to get at with Jackson, IL. Here, being different is not a kind of flaw. It is where you get your power and your story from. It is role-playing fuel.

Take my witch NPCs, Faye and Larina. Faye is a lesbian, and Larina is bisexual. These aren’t special episodes for their characters any more than dealing Faye’s white hair or Stephanie’s confidence are. They are who they are, down to the secrets under the town of Jackson itself. Their identities matter because they color how they and the world view each other, but they are not defined by them alone. Ok, maybe Faye's white hair is a bad example since it IS a side effect of her soul being leeched out by her aunties. Maybe a better example is why does Larina, who is right-handed, wear a watch on her right wrist?

Faye has a head start on living with a secret. Her Aunties raised her, and there is more to that than the people of Jackson know. They are not humans; they are Urban Hags and are forcing Faye to become a monster herself. She knows how to watch a room, to pick up on what is said when she thinks no one of consequence is around. She knows family can be your shelter and your danger in the same house. Being a lesbian doesn’t make her tragic; beng raised by monsters makes her tragic. It also makes her sharper, gives her cause to spot a mask or a threat or an act of kindness for what it is.

Then you have Larina. Her bisexuality is part of her liminal state. She is the weird witch girl with one foot in the everyday and the other in something much older. Some find her frightening because she won’t be simple. She is likes boys and girls alike, as well as records and occult tomes and whatever is calling from the other side of the Veil. In a way, she is all the things Monsterhearts is made of: hunger, fear, curiosity, power. If she is confused, it is not because of her sexuality. She is because she is sixteen and grieving the loss of her mother, and powerful and watched and wanted, and she is afraid of the price of wanting anything. There is danger in having the power to curse an entire bloodline and still not being able to legally drive. 

To me, that is the real stuff. And it makes for some fine role-playing. They are not "after-school special" topics; they are characters. 

Ally, Lesbian, and Bi in Jackson, IL.
Yes. I know those flags were not around in 1985-86, nor were supernatural monsters.

You have to be careful with the dramatic opportunities so as not to turn a character’s identity into some kind of penance or punishment. I am keenly aware of how LGBTQ characters have been portrayed since, well, forever, and that is not something that I am going to do here. Characters are nto going to be punished because of their sexual preferences. They will be punished for dabbling in the dark arts, or because the whole damn town is filled with monsters and ghosts. Characters are punished for bad choices in a dangerous, not because of their identity. 

The 1980s were a pressure cooker for any sort of identity. Adults wield power, and in those days, your reputation was everything. A misstep in the wrong corridor could haunt you for months. Thomas Avery, one of our teachers, is well aware of this. Being gay, he is cautious; he knows how fast a rumor can be turned into a weapon. He is a good teacher on account of his ability to listen, not because any suffering has made him noble. He will know when a student is trying to put something across without putting it into words. He is a good person and a likable guy. 

Then there is Elaine Bellweather. She is gay as well, but the world makes of her what it will, quite differently from Thomas. She is no front-line warrior. She teaches music and lives a quiet life, but she is one of the few adults in Jackson who keeps an eye on things and does not jump to condemn. In a town rife with secrets and monsters, you do not find many like her. And that counts for something. She is no one's "favorite teacher," but she does provide a space for the students (often read as Player Characters) to grow.

It is part of what makes for good LGBTQ representation in a horror game. An adult need not be attacking demons with a sword to be heroic. Sometimes, providing a space where a kid can get some air is enough. Sometimes the adult is the hero who just lets them feel safe, even for a little while. 

Monsterhearts has a way of putting it all in words. You have your strings for leverage or emotional debt, and your conditions for the labels people slap on you: "Freak." "Witch." "Creepy." "Queer." "Devil worshipper." In a high school horror set in the 1980s, those are as perilous as claws. But they can be put to the test. That is where the role-playing is. Not in having queer characters put through the wringer for being there, but in seeing what they do when someone tries to put them in a box. Do they run? Lash out? Or do they take the very label meant to hurt them and make it a banner?  A condition like ‘Freak’ might begin as hallway cruelty, but in play, it can become the moment when a character decides she would rather be feared honestly than accepted falsely.

There is your Pride. It is more than the parades and flags, as great as those are. It is the choice to stop making excuses for being real. Think of the witch who ceases to feign deafness to the dead, or the werewolf done with calling himself broken. Or the lesbian teen who sees right through the monster trying to work his charms on every girl in school, because what she wants is hers alone. A bisexual witch is figuring out that wanting two different kinds of futures doesn’t make her a fraud. That is not pandering; it is simply good character work.

I want the LGBTQ folks in Jackson, IL, to be part of the world. Some are ordinary, some are witches, some are teachers, some are students, and many are just regular people. Let them be messy and wrong about things and as complicated as the rest. Some are scared, some are not. Monsterhearts is adept at that; it won’t make adolescence neat and tidy or desire safe. It acknowledges that being young is intense and strange in its own right. We are putting that in 1986, with the Satanic Panic and some fine music in the background, where even a note passed in class feels like a spell.

For Pride Month, that is the part I want to acknowledge and celebrate.

The outsider is not outside because they are lesser. They know where that divide is because they have often been made painfully aware of it. They are outside because they can see the shape of the door.

And sometimes, in Jackson, they are the only ones who know how to open it. 

And to the kids I went to High School with in the 1980s who later came out and are much happier now, I am glad you found your happiness. 

This Old Dragon: Issue #44

 I talked about Gardner Fox and his contributions to the Appendix N yesterday. I thought I'd pull out a very old Dragon magazine, #44, and feature his contributions from it today. As I mentioned previously, he is one of the rare few authors in the Appendix N who would later also publish within the pages of Dragon. So let's set the controls all the way back to December 1980. At this point, I have been playing D&D for a little more than a year. Playing was rare, but it always filled me with excitement.  Clint Eastwood stars with an orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can." In a sad note, the orangutan, Buddha, who played Clyde, was clubbed to death by his trainer for stealing a doughnut. There were no laws about the treatment of animals on the books at the time, so nothing happened. "Lady" by Kenny Rogers is all over the airwaves, and on tables and game store shelves everywhere is This Old Dragon #44.

Our cover is from none other than Phil Fogolio, featuring the new included game, Food Fight. Other artists include Mike Carroll, Jack Crane, Jeff Dee, Tracy Lesch, Kenneth Rahman, Roger Raupp, Jim Roslof, and Bill Willingham.

I have to start by noting how thick the paper is for this one. At 100 pages, this issue is heavy. Yes, there is the Food Fight game inside, but still, the paper is quite thick. Compared to the similar page count of Issue #85 (my first purchased issue) they feel very different.

So already this is a big issue in more ways (weighs?) than one. 

We have two Editorials: one from Bryce Knorr on his Food Fight game, and another from Assistant Editor Kim Mohan on all the features of this issue. 

Letters is still known as Out On A Limb at this point. The topic of the month are Dwarven Women, Beards or No. 

Up first, and foremost, is The Lure of the Golden Godling, a Niall of the Far Travels tale by Gardner F. Fox. While this is not a Dragon I owned back in the 80s, I looked up once I got my Dragon CD-ROM and I was completely surprised that Fox had written for Dragon.

The Super Spies for the new Top Secret game is up by Allen Hammack. This covers the Top Secret stats for various movie and TV Spies like James Bond, Napoleon Solo, John Steed, Emma Peel, and even Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. I rather love things like this and have done my own fair share of multimedia witches here. So I can appreciate this level of obsession. This is not something you would see anymore; corporations are far too litigious. 

Mark Simmons has a review of the King of the Mountain board game. The game is for 2 to 10 players. The premise is simple: get your character to the top of the mountain first and claim the wizard's prize with one player controlling the actions of the Wizard and the monsters. It sounds like it could be fun, but it doesn't trigger my "Traveller Envy," which I guess is good.

We get to an early featured topic section in Dragon with Fantasy Genetics. These articles all attempt to take a scientifc point of view on the various humanoid species in D&D. 

Gregory G. H. Rihn is up first with Humanoid Races in Review, which builds upon The Dragon #29 article from Gygax about the Half-ogre and the issues it caused back then. Among other things, we get some quasi Linnaean taxonomy on the various species. Humans are Homo sapiens sapiens, elves are Homo sapiens sylvanus, and orcs are Homo sapiens orc. The implication here is that humans are fertile with both elves and orcs. Cavemen are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, dwarves are Homo faber (and both genders feature beards), and the Sasquatch is Homo sasquatch. Gnomes are a subclass of Homo faber. So both dwarves and gnomes are "makers." That works. Halflings are not covered, but 24 years later, we get the discovery of Homo floresiensis, who are called "Hobbits."

Half-ors in a Variety of Styles by Roger Moore takes us to Fantasy Genetics II. Here, our focus switches to the orc family and the various cross-breeds they can have. Here Moore contends that orcs are a member of the genus Australopithecus. These include: Kobold (Australopithecus boisei), Goblin (Australopithecus africanus), Hobgoblin (Australopithecus robustus), and Bugbear (Australopithecus giganticus). Even ogres (Ramapithecus robustus) and hill giants (Meganthropus giganticus) are covered.  The science is a bit bonkers, but it is a lot of fun. I mean if dragons can have a taxonomic nomclature, humanoids certainly should.

Fantasy Genetics III kicks off with What Do You Get When You Cross...? by John S. Olson. He is also building off of the Half-Ogre idea from The Dragon #29. He makes the radical suggestion that nearly any sort of creature can crossbreed with another. But not all of their offspring are going to be suitable for play.  In fact there is a section here that is close to the hearts of many new players that most old players seem to have forgotten was first introduced in 1980.

Finally, in Fantasy Genetics IV, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh takes us back to high school biology, Mendelian genetics, and Punnett squares in Half + Half Isn't Always Full. Well, a really simple overview of inheritance by genes. Examples are given with humans and orcs. 

None of the four articles really solves any problems and likely introduces new ones. I'll have to pick ahead and see if there are any letters about this issue. 

Nice big ad from J.J. Brodsky & Sons, Inc. Hobby Distributors. Featuring all the hobby stores in the Midwest that offer Dungeons & Dragons. This gives a little bit of evidence to my whole Illinois Pipeline idea. There are a ton here whose addresses are well known to me, but sadly, there are no hobby stores left there. One of which would have been a 10 min drive or less from my home. 

Sage Advice covers some AD&D rules questions.

Dave "Zeb" Cook (of the Expert Set, Isle of Dread, and so much more) is next with a new Giants in the Earth featuring two more NPCs taken from novels. We have C.S. Lewis's Reepicheep and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. I don't know the first, but I am a fan of Challenger, who in my mind should be played by Brian Blessed. Though I don't think he is a 16th-level fighter, really. He would make for a great NIGHT SHIFT character.

My late friend Len Lakofka is up with Leomund's Tiny Hut Monsters: How Strong is Strong? where he attempts to give some monsters some Strength Scores. His logic is sound IF the damage types and spreads are good. I have gone through many, many monsters in my oft-languishing "Basic Bestiary," and there is some good data here. But as well know, really, that Gygax often did not build his monsters using the same rules that characters use. That is not something we will see until the new editions of D&D, starting with 3rd. Len, though, makes a solid showing here, and his numbers look really good.

The Simulation Corner is up with A History of Games and Gaming from John Prados, noted Wargame designer, and here about two years shy of his Ph.D. in Political Science. He is lamenting the lack of any written history of games and gaming and is actively looking for such documentation. 

Food Fight is our mini-game this issue, but it does take up quite a lot of the issue, to be honest (24 pages and a cardstock insert) . The game was designed by Byce Knorr, and the art is from the amazing Bill Willingham and Jeff Dee.  You can read a bit about the game at Board Game Geek, but it does make this your better-than-average value Dragon magazine. Honestly, reading it over more I kinda want to adapt it somehow to my Jackson, IL game! Though it doesn't really fit the vibe I am going with.  Though there is a really convenient map.

After this, we get the continuation of the Gardner Fox Niall tale. 

Here Comes the Judges Guild, by William Fawcett, is an overview and review of nine products from Judges Guild. These are some of the classics of the early days of JG; Modron, Escape from Astigar's Lair, The Treasure Vaults of Lindoran, Inferno, Portals of Torsh, Spies of Lightelf, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Legendary Duck Tower, and City of Lei Tabor. Great content. Too bad JG went to complete shit. 

The agents for Top Secret continue, as does the review of King of the Mountain. 

Glenn Rahman is up with his classic Minarian Legends for the Diving Right game. This time about The Black Knight. I will admit that I know next to nothing about this game. But there is a wiki for it, so maybe I will check it out.

The Electric Eye from Mark Herro offers early examples of computer software for playing D&D-like games (Dungeon of Death). Keep in mind, we are talking Atari 2600-level games at this point, and this is the end of this column's first year. The games include  Dungeon of Death by Instant Software for your solo gaming needs. Android Nim by 80-US, and Time Traveller by Krell Software. Software companies came and went like leaves in the wind back then. Few survived to today.

There is even a little BASIC program at the end. 

Dragon's Bestiary gives us three new AD&D creatures. The Koodjanuk, Cyroserpent, and Ice Golem.

Another ad for a Hobby Game Distributors, with more stores in Illinois than in nine other states combined. 

Nothing But the Ho-Ho-Ho Truth by Douglas Loss is an odd one, since WotC has it online for you to read.

Comics include Wormy and Darlene's The Story of Jasmine. The art for Jasmine is still above and beyond anything you should expect from a magazine.

So this is a really good issue and filled with some really fun content.

Makes me want to check out more from this era.