This Old Dragon #100

 Today I have another Dragon from Eric Harshbarger , and honestly, it is one of my favorites. Dragon #100 was a special issue all around. Dragon had already celebrated 10 years and now this issue came with a thicker cover and an embossed "paper cut" dragon on the cover. While there was drama behind the scenes at TSR, many of us remained blissfully unaware and this issue celebrated Dragon, D&D, and all things TSR. It was a snapshot of the end of what many call the Golden Age of  Dungeons & Dragons.

In August 1985, I was getting ready to start my Junior Year in High School. I had just gotten my driver's license (late; I needed new glasses), and I had been playing AD&D all summer long. I had seen the movie "Back to the Future" at least a dozen times that summer, and "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News from the movie dominated the airwaves. And on tables everywhere was Issue #100 of This Old Dragon.

By this point, I had been buying Dragon magazine regularly for over a year. I couldn't rely on the other players in my group, so my DM and I split the duties; I'd buy one month, and he the next. But we both bought this one. 

Dennis Kauth is our cover artist for this issue, and it is a memorable one. It is a paper sculpture laid flat and photographed. The purple color of the faerie dragon was then added later. Why purple? Because they are the oldest and most powerful faerie dragons. This was his only Dragon Magazine cover, but he was also a key contributor to the BATTLESYSTEM game, building many of the 3D paper minis and cartography. 

Kim Mohan's Editorial is, as expected, reflective. Focusing on the his shared history with Dragon. 

Letters takes a different turn this month to answer some questions they often get. It is more of a Frequently Asked Questions feature. Questions like "why haven't you answered my letter?" to "how do you handle manuscript or art submissions?"

Score one for Sabratact, which covers the sport of the same name. Forest Baker is reporting on this form of sport combat, a bit like sparing but less LARPing than, say, SCA. Gary Gygax gives us an introduction. Essentially you wear armor and use blunt fencing like swords or other weapons. Your armor is affixed with discs with a paper surface. The goal is to take out your opponent's paper discs. Each disk has a different set of points and the first to score 10 points on their opponent wins. It is still being played and the official website even has pictures from this issue of Dragon.

Frank Mentzer is up with All About the Druid-Ranger. This article has some clarifications on the multiclass Druid-Ranger Gygax talked about in Issue #96. The controversy, of course, from the time Rangers could only be Good and Druids had to be true neutral. The solution is the obvious Neutral Good alignment, and the rest of the article is the rationale. We took this article as gospel. It was from the mind and hands of Gygax and Mentzer; how much more official could it be? 

Speaking of which, The Forum has discussions on the "legality" of altering the official AD&D system in game play. 

Ed Greenwood is next (wow, we are getting all the heavy hitters in this one) with Pages from the Mages V. There is less background fiction here, Elminster sitting in a canoe enjoying the summer night in Wisconsin, but the spells are just as fun. Many of these spells made their way into our big world-ending campaign of 1986. 

At Moonset Blackcat Comes is a tale about Gord the Rogue, the Cat Lord and Dragonchess from Gary Gygax. This is a bit of fiction to show the place of Dragonchess in Gary's world. While I thought the story was ok, it ignited my DM. There were two immediate impacts of this. The first was the increasing inclusion of the Catlord in our games. The second, well that is coming up.

Nice full-page ad for the Unearthed Arcana is next.

If Dungeons & Dragons is Gary's greatest feats as a game designer, then our next article should go down as one of his most overlooked feats. Dragonchess by Gary Gygax is an ambitious chess variant played on a 12 x 8 x 3 board. Yes, it is a 3D chess, with three levels. I won't go into detail here about how to play, there is a Wikipedia article for it, but I will get into how we played it.  I came over to Grenda's for our regular D&D session and he had built a Dragonchess set. Using plexiglass and long bolts he built the boards and marked out the grids with painter's tape. He used chess pieces from different sets and made the other pieces of random bits.  We played it...well. We tried to play it. We quickly saw that we kept forgetting about the other boards above and below. But, it was fun. 

I know there was some software out there that allowed you to play dragon chess. I am not sure if it still around. I have seen other people build their own boards and sets, and with 3D printing, making the pieces would be a lot easier (in fact, here they are). While I never played a full game of it, many half-attempts, I have very fond memories of this game. 

Our centerpiece, as if the Dragonchess wasn't enough, is one of my all time favorite Dragon Magazine adventures, The City Beyond the Gate by Robert Schroeck. This adventure takes your AD&D characters of at least 9th level and sends them through a gate to London of the 1980s!  I was already a huge Anglophile at this point. My favorite bands were Pink Floyd, The Police, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and still The Beatles. Doctor Who was my favorite television show. AND the adventure was about finding the Mace of St. Cuthbert. So this was custom-made for me, really. The adventure is a long one, 21 pages, and has maps and "tech item" flow charts as seen in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. 

The adventure was a lot of fun, and I am thinking of getting my Dragon DC-ROM and printing it out for my kids to use. I think they would find it great. If I were to re-run today, I think I might set it in Victorian London of the 1890s. Though...there is a lot of fun to be had in London of the 1980s. 

And I do love any map of London.

Wow, we are already into the Ares section of this Dragon. The "cover" has the then Guardians of the Galaxy on it. 

Creative Conjuring from Eric Walker is a variant magic system for Marvel Superheroes. Dr. Strange is featured throughout and he was always one of my favorite Marvel characters. I remember trying to figure out if I could use any of this with AD&D, but I never got it to work how I wanted. BUT given the time period, I am sure some of those notes went into one of the drafts of my witch class or characters. 

Champions gets some love for our first non-TSR RPG covered in CHAMPIONS Plus! by Steven Maurer. This has new powers for CHAMPIONS heroes. Again, I am not 100% certain, but I think some ideas here went into my witches. The "Domination" and "Vertigo" powers feel too familiar to me. 

Nice big ad for Mentzer's Masters Set rules. I think at the time I saw the Master's rules and the Unearthed Arcana as being similar products, one for D&D and the other for AD&D. That is not really the case, but it did solidify my decision to keep with AD&D and drop D&D. It would have been interesting if I had gone the other route, but I don't regret my choices. 

Charisma Counts! by S.D. Anderson gives us a charisma stat for Villains & Vigilantes. 

Defenders of the Future by William Tracy gives us the 1985 version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The only one recognizable by today's audiences would be Yondu, and even then his comic version is different than his film version. 

The proper Marvel-Phile by good friend Jeff Grubb covers the Defenders; Gargoyle, Cloud, and Valkyrie. I always kinda liked Gargoyle and Valkyrie in the comics. 

Doug Niles talks about the BATTLESYSTEM project in The Chance of a Lifetime. He reflects on it's design and how he sees it fitting into the AD&D rules. 

We get another ad from Ramal LaMarr! Keep it funky Ramal!

From First Draft to Last Gasp by Michael Dobson covers the initial idea and creation of the BATTLESYSTEM game to it's final post editor form. Dobson was the editor of this massive project and he shares his own insight to how it was created back when it was called "Bloodstone Pass."

COMPRESSOR by Michael D. Selinker is a crossword puzzle.

Convention Calendar covers the cons of late summer to early winter of 1985. Sadly, nothing local to me then.

Gamers' Guide has our small ads.

Wormy, Dragonmirth, and Snarf Quest follow. 

Ok. So that was a crazy good issue. 

There is a lot here, and what I consider a collectible issue. 

It would be great for Dragonchess or adventure alone. And you know an issue is good if Ed Greenwood's contribution doesn't even crack the top three articles! There are many good issues coming up as well.