It is the spring of 1984. I am a Freshman in high school. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the #1 movie. Newly inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Phil Collins "Against All Odds" is our #1 song and on shelves everywhere, and certainly my game table is This Old Dragon #85.
Ok, the art for this issue is quite striking and it immediately drew me in. "The Innocent Power" by Susan Collins was one of the best I had seen on Dragon. It is what drew me in, but not what sold me.
This issue is memory-rich for me. I went over every word and image in this issue. Case in point, the Ral Partha ad on the opposite side of the cover. It features "The Black Prince's Chariot of Fear" pulled by freaking Balrogs! Wait! Can you do that?? Yeah, I had seen many minis before, but this was different. This was me looking at this image in my own bedroom or out on my front porch (where I often worked on "D&D stuff" during the summer). Either way, 40 years later, it is still cool.
Kim Mohan is our Editor-in-Chief here, and he discusses two different electronic dice tools. I always wanted one of those, but could never justify the cost. What I did was program my calculator to be a dice roller. This was before I learned about pseudo-random numbers. The next part of the Editorial covers the "feature" of this issue, and why I bought it; it is all about Clerics. At the time, I played a lot of Clerics as Undead and Vampire hunters, not necessarily as healers.
The Letters section is known as Out On A Limb at this point. Letters include a guy asking about copyrights on the various published D&D materials. Sure, use as you want, but don't try to resell anything. Some comments on typos. And more.
Ad for Gen Con 17. I am wearing my Gen 52 shirt as I am writing this.
The Forum covers deeper opinions and reflections. I like the Forum, but this one bugged me at first. Every entry dealt with something from a previous issue so it made it hard to know what was being talked about. As I went on this discussion held more value to me. Interestingly enough, one of the contributors in Katherine Kerr talking about one of her own articles.
Ad for Grenadier models. I bought one of the Fantasy Lords sets and then proceeded to try to paint them with Testor's paints. Yeah. I did that.
The Cleric Collection is the feature of this issue, and I ate it up.
Kim Mohan is up first with Here's To Your Health. This covers more first aid in AD&D. There is a nice overview of curing magic, including healing vs curing magic.
Special Skills, Special Thrills from Roger E. Moore expands on an idea introduced by Gary Gygax in his World of Greyhawk setting. This expands, granting Clerics new powers based on their god, as detailed in Deities & Demigods. This includes not just powers but also the taboos they must follow. There are enough examples here to apply to any god. This all basically became part of the rules in AD&D 2nd Ed and later editions. But back in 1984? This was great stuff, and I locked on to it. My Sun Priest, Necromancer, Healer, and yes, the Witch began here in their earliest forms.
Nice ad for Powers & Perils. I had no idea before this that there were so many games. Yes, I knew about all the big names, but Powers & Perils was not one of those. The game still has an active presence online.
In our non-Editor entry, Fraser Sherman gives us a good companion piece to Moore's article. In Clerics Must be Deity-Bound he talks about the behavior clerics follow to earn those spells, turning, and even special powers. The example dialog between a Cleric of Thor, Tyr, Diancecht, and Aphrodite, and how each would deal with a couple of dozen guards. Let's ignore the logistics of how or why the four are in the same party and focus on the message. Clerics need to be different than each other. Again, this article is the model from which the later Faiths & Avatars books for the Forgotten Realms and AD&D 2nd edition game would take their ultimate form.
Ad for the Traveller book. Also called the Blue Book in my gaming circles, I think I ordered it that very summer along with Chill.
Michael Gray is up with PBM: Problems by Mail, a discussion on the various issues currently bothering play-by-mail gamers.
I did not know it at the time, who did really, but the next article would set a tone for yet again, AD&D 2nd Edition and the Forgotten Realms. The Ecology of the Ixitxachitl by Dragon MVP Ed Greenwood. Here I learned about their worship of Demogorgon and even the rare vampire Ixitxachitl.
Susan Shwatz has our fiction with Valkyrie Settlement. I am sure I read it at some point, but skimming it over, I can't recall much of it.
What can be considered the first hero of English epics, Beowulf, is up but three different versions from three different authors, Robert Cook, Roger E. Moore, and Kyle Gray in Three Cheers for Beowulf.
For the price at the time, $3.00, I felt Dragon was a good deal, but when it added some like a mini-adventure like The Twofold Talisman, Adventure Two: The Ebon Stone by Roger Moore, Philip Tatercyznski, Douglas Niles, & Georgia Moore. I always wanted to get Part One, which I eventually got, but I ran this one a few times. There is some silly bits here, the Halfling D.V. for example. Still, it is fun and I might be giving it a little more latitude because I was not expecting to get an adventure in my issue of Dragon.
Speaking of adventures, Modules: What We're Hunting For, covers some guidelines on what sort of things the editors of Dragon are looking for. We are still a little bit away from Dungeon magazine, but I can't help but think this is related to that effort.
Dragonlance is still brand new and has not yet caught the gaming world by storm. But it will. A Stone's Throw Away by Roger E. Moore is the second short story set in the Dragonlance world to appear in Dragon. I won't go as far as to say I was/am a huge Dragonlance fan, but I did enjoy the novels, and I liked reading the adventures, but even then, I knew they were railroady and set to serve the needs of the main characters. One day, I would like to run them, but I would need to significantly rewrite them.
Oh. Witch Hunt. An ad for this game hits on page 58, and I had to have it. I never found a copy 'til much later, but I still have it.
Ken Rolston is up with more game reviews. In Advanced Hack-and-Slash, he covers four new games that all have heavy combat focuses. Up first is Warhammer. It looks fun, I wonder if it will catch on? Rolston likes it and thinks it is a good entry into the mass combat fantasy rules category. REAPER: Fantasy Wargame Rules is next along with a scenario, Attack of the Fungoid Trolls. It was created in 1981 with 2/3rds of the designers of Warhammer. Rolston points out that criticisms of the game are unnecessary since most of the glaring errors and missteps have been corrected by Warhammer, but he has it here as a historical perspective. Next is the celebrated Lost Worlds playbooks from Nova Game Designs and designed by Ace of Aces' Alfred Leonardi. These books fascinated me because I always wanted to see how they worked. No one near me played it, and I never saw it in my local stores. Rolston likes the game and concept, but finds it expensive; each character needs a playbook at $6 per, and replayability is very low. Finally, Cry Havoc is not a Fantasy Wargame, but "a lovely model of what a perfect FRP combat wargame should look like." It is a medieval skirmish game that is easy to learn and play and is "superb in every way."
Providing the counterpoint, Katharine Kerr has her review of Warhammer in Warhammer FRP System Falls Flat. No. She is not a fan.
We now come to the Ares section. Now I knew nothing about SPI or Ares prior to this, so I thought this was *just* the Sci-fi offering in a normally Fantasy magazine. But it did feel different. The Federation Guide to Luna is a great kick-off by Dale L. Kemper. I learn that it is part of a series detailing the Moon in different sci-fi settings. If this sounds a little like my notion of West Haven, then you would be correct. This is for the FASA Star Trek game.
John M. Maxstadt is up with Gamma Hazards, New Mutants for the GAMMA WORLD Game. These include some fungimals and the humbug.
Roger E. Moore is more than pulling his weight this issue with some advice for Traveller players.
Lions, Tigers, & Superheroes covers animals for the Champions game by Leonard Carpenter.
Starquestions is our "sage advice" for Star Frontiers.
Gamer's Guide has our small ads. This includes one of the previously alluded to dice rollers. A module for "the most popular fantasy roleplaying game." And The Game Master program on cassette for the Vic-20 and Timex-Sinclair and compatible with Dungeons & Dragons.
The Convention Calendar is next for what is going on in the Summer of 1984.
Wormy is next with some weirf mutants. Dragon mirth has our comics, including the short-lived Talanalan by Kurt Erichsen.
We wrap it up with Elmore's Snarf Quest.
All in all, a fantastic issue. Though my perception may be colored by nostalgia. You never forget your first...Dragon really. The copy I have here is not my first. That one is long, long gone, but I hold on to this one as if it were some sort of sacred text. Yes, it is technically no different than Dragon #84 or #86, and they do not get the same sort of reverence out of me.
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