Moving ahead to one of the "newer" issues in my collection. This comes to us from the distant past of March 1991. I was a senior in college, but would take another year to finish up my honors courses, my minor and to take a few grad school classes before getting into grad school. I was not really playing much at this point, but still buying and reading a bunch of Ravenloft games and books.
I believe by this time I had printed out the first solid draft of my witch class for 2nd Ed and was revising it more. So without further ado here is March 1991 and this is issue #167 of This Old Dragon.
To the cover. Ok. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate faces on inanimate objects? Cars, trains, especially airplanes. But more than anything TREES! I think it some deep-seated childhood trauma related to both "Wizard of Oz" and "From Hell it Came". My family will taunt me with it by giving trees with faces on them for Halloween. Anyway. The girl on here looks she wandered off from a Clyde Caldwell cover and is slumming here. The artist is Fred Fields.
You can tell this is the 90s Dragon because of all the ads. Mind you I am not complaining; I like the ads. But there are more. More pages in general too.
Given this is the era near 2nd Edition the Dragons all have themes. This one is the Wilderness. I liked the themed issues, gave me something to look forward too.
The Editorial is an interesting one with addresses for you to send something to anyone serving in the US or British military. I guess this is the time of Operation Desert Storm.
Up first is ...holy shit! it's the OSR's very own
+Joseph Bloch! (hmm auto-tagging is not working on this). He is up with an article right in his wheel-house,
See the Pomarj - and Die! The three page article (four with cover image) is a bit of history on the Pomarj. It even has some details about the Slave Lords and plenty of old-school tables. This is some good stuff that I wish I had known about when running the A-series recently. Ah well.
David Howery is next with
Back to the Age of Mammals, taking us back to when the dinosaurs did their disappearing act and the mammals took over. There are a ton of great, untapped and underused creatures. One of my favorites is even here, the Amphicyon. I used my own version for a primitive were-wolf/were-bear hybrid back when I ran
Palace of the Silver Princess. This really makes this issue a stand out in my mind.
The Ecology of the Su-Monster would have been something I would have eaten up back in the day. Matthew Schutt gives us an updated version of these monsters and they work. I always liked these little monsters. I ran an adventure where the locals worshiped as a god.
Gregg Chamberlain is next with the
Dragon's Bestiary with various plant-based monsters.
Curses are Divine* But their effects on your fantasy hero are horrible! by Mark Keavney which details major and minor divine curses. This is not the curses of the 3rd level spell, these are special and really powerful. Also detailed are the situation where someone can find themselves so cursed.
TSR Previews tells us what is hot for March 1991 and beyond. On the list is RA2 Ravenloft Ship of Horror, a favorite of mine. Though I would always call it "Ship of Fools" after the Robert Plant song.
Arcane Lore by Jeffrey Pettengill has some expansions to the 2nd Ed Necromancer specialty wizard and necromancy spells.
Bruce Heard is back with more
Princess Ark. I am planning on collecting these and using some of it for my BECMI Magic School game.
Role of Computers covers the best of 1990. Again, it's hard to review a review of the "State of the Art" of 27 years ago.
Sage Advice covers some Monstrous Compendium Vol II questions and the perennial question of how do I find a gaming group.
Peter Trueman as what he calls "a more realistic approach to fantasy" in
Just Give me Money! It's a long article that details maybe than you would want to know about coins. Or maybe it is sort of the detail you like. For me, it is more log-work than I like in my games. Once I ate this stuff up.
Marvel-Phile deals with some of Spider-man's foes from across the pond in England in
The Lads from Liverpool. Spiders and Beatles. cute.
Nice big and water-damaged ad for Chill (2nd Edition).
(gotta be honest here. This issue is testing the mettle of my allergy drugs!)
Thomas Kane gives us some NPCs from historical references for an Oriental Adventures game in
Lords of the Warring States. We are still in that odd overlap time of 1st and 2nd Editions.
Con Calendar is huge this month.
Ed is back. Am I at a point yet where I can say "Ed" and you all know I mean Ed Greenwood? Instead of his normal conversation with Elminster, he ends up talking to Laeral of Waterdeep. I do not begrudge Ed this, it is always entertaining and even when I didn't like the Realms I liked these articles. This time he is covering
the Undermoutain - the King of All Dungeons. Ok. So. It's an ad for the new Undermountain boxed set. Yeah, I can't even be irritated by that.
Role of Books from John C. Bunnell has the best of late winter/early spring 1991 including one that is STILL on my TBR pile, Deryni Magic by Katherine Kurtz. Yeah, Grad School was not conducive to pleasure reading.
And just like that, we are at Dragonmirth. The big feature is The Twilight Realm, which is on part 11. I really know nothing about that strip, I should look into it more.
Ah, here are the small ads and classifieds.
Ok. Not a packed issue, but a lot of great bright spots like Joe's and Bruce's contributions.
I wonder what else I have from this time? Will be fun to see!
