This Old Dragon: Best of The Dragon Vol #1

 This is the first issue from the Eric C. Harshbarger collection. I did have a copy already, but it is in rather sad shape. I have had a copy of this issue for a bit. I was hesitant to review it since it not exactly the same as reviewing a proper issue of Dragon. This is a curated collection, or as it says on the cover, a Best of. Part of the fun of This Old Dragon is reflecting on the issue, what I was doing at the same time it was out, and finding the gems, or lumps of coal, in each one. But, I am very willing to make an exception for Best of The Dragon vol. 1 and Best of Dragon vol. II for various reasons. First, I am not likely to find the older issues they cover, especially from Vol 1. Secondly, these issues were part of my D&D experiences growing up. I remember getting my copy of Best of Vol. II at the same time I picked up Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. My old high school DM, Grenda, and I agreed he would buy the odd-numbered ones and I the even-numbered ones. So there is some added nostalgia for me. So lets get into it.

I should note that this issue is really just "Best of The Dragon." There no other volumes to be a Vol. I for yet. But it will come soon.

Best of The Dragon

This best-of collection was initially published in 1980 and was edited by Tim Kask. It covers the Strategic Review and The Dragon vols I and II, or the first two years of The Dragon. So, from 1975 to 1978. Game-wise, this also covers the era of Original D&D and the dawn of AD&D.  

What I want to get from this is a feel for what was going on then. 1975 to 1978 is a great time since this predates my own involvement in the game. I would not start playing until 1979. So the Best of Dragons were like hidden treasures of a bygone age. These were my "Glamdring" and "Orcrist" treasures. That is, if Gygax was Turgon and Lake Geneva was Gondolin. 

This reads like a White Paper for AD&D. You can see how, where, and even why AD&D was made here with the various additions and rule guidelines. To expand on this further to my own interests, the lack of inclusion of the witch class seems a little odder. 

There are a lot of articles here and they are packed together. I will mention them all, but some might not get much more than that. Others though are very interesting.

Section 1: Design/Designer's Forum

This all reads like rough drafts of the AD&D game presented from the D&D point of view. I should also add that Metamorphosis Alpha also gets some coverage.

Planes by Gary Gygax gives us our first look at what will become the famous D&D "wheel" cosmology. The color-coded planes of this article make it slightly more useful than its Player's Handbook counterpart.

How Green Was My Mutant, also by Gygax, gives us some random human mutation tables. I note these can be used in conjunction with the the random demons tables in the back of this issue. More on that later. 

What follows are some more MA articles, Some Ideas Missed in Metamorphosis Alpha by James M. Ward and An Alternate Beginning Sequence for Metamorphosis: Alpha (note the colon) by Guy W. McLimore, Jr. It is easy to see the ideas brewing that would transform MA into Gamma World. 

Hints for D&D Judges is a three-part series from Joe Fischer helping what will be called Dungeon Masters. I like the use of "Judge" here, very much old-school and the original idea for DM. Part 1 covers towns. Part 2 is Wilderness, and Part 3 is the Dungeon itself.

The amazing Lee Gold has a rare Dragon appearance with her article on Languages or Could You Repeat that in Auld Wormish? Given the discussions I have had here on languages, you know this is one that I have gone back to many times. 

Tony Walston is up with The Development of Towns in D&D. It covers two pages and is packed really. I think some of this morphed into future articles about towns. Like all articles from this time, it is largely "here are your tools, go build it," which is great and works well for me. I am fairly sure that Grenda used some of this for all the cities he built and we adventured in.

On the other side of this is Let There Be A Method To Your Madness from Richard Gilbert. This article details how you should design your dungeons from the ground up, er, down. Followed by Daniel Clifton with Designing For Unique Wilderness Encounters. There is an assumption here, I think, that this is largely for a hex-crawl sort of adventure. 

Jim Ward is back with two more MA-related articles, Deserted Cities of Mars and The Total Person In Metamorphosis Alpha. 

Ok, now this one is an odd one. How Heavy Is My Giant is overtly a good article. It is a math-intensive guide on how much a giant-sized human should weigh. The article was "written" by Shlump Da Orc. Seriously? The article is good and whoever wrote it should be taking credit.

Rob Kuntz is up with Tolkien in Dungeons & Dragons. Knowing what I know now, this article hits a little differently. Though there is one solid point that was very true then and very true now. While there are similarities between Tolkien and D&D, they are not the same thing. The best example is the elves. D&D elves are not the immortals of Tolkien, nor should they be.

Jim Ward, our MVP of this collection, is up again with Notes From a Semi-Successful D&D Player. It is a bit of his reflections on playing as long as he had been at that point. He continues these thoughts on Some Thoughts on the Speed of a Lightning Bolt. This is less about how fast a lightning bolt moves, and more about how fast the wizard can cast the spell. 

The Meaning of Law and Chaos in Dungeons & Dragons and Their Relationships to Good and Evil is next. It sounds like the title of a Master's Thesis, and in a way, it is. It was from Gary Gygax himself and it is in my opinion required reading. The graph of the soon-to-be AD&D alignment system is more complex than what we see in either Holmes Basic D&D or the AD&D Player's Handbook. There is a sense of "degree" or "intensity" in this. So, Demons are the most Chaotic Evil, then followed by Red Dragons (back then, yes), Trolls, and moving closer to Neutral, Orcs, Efreeti, Wereboars, and more. So not all creatures of the same alignment experience or act the exact same way. I think this distinction was lost later on. Suggesting that a Chaotic Evil creature can only act as chaotic evil. 

This is the start of a series of articles by Gygax. There is a short article, Gary Gygax on Dungeons & Dragons which covers how Gary says he started the game. We know now of course it was much more involved that the handful of paragraphs here. This is followed by D&D is Only as Good as the DM. This is the first mention in this magazine of the "Dungeonmaster" (one word).

The Dungeons & Dragons Magic System is next from Gary and covers how the D&D magic system evolved out of Chainmail.

Section 2: Dragon Mirth

This section covers some of the "funnier" articles from TSR/The Dragon.

There is a Monster Reference Table Addition for a bunch of creatures they just made up for this. Sort of amusing I guess. 

Jake Jaquet is up with The Search for the Forbidden Chamber. A bit of fiction. 

Omar Kwalish (really Tim Kask) is up with What To Do When the Dog Eats Your Dice. Which is actually helpful, in a silly premise way. What to do if you don't have dice handy. Granted this is an artifact of the time. Everyone has a phone with access to dice rollers. But he also provides some solid 20th-century solutions like chits, cards, numbered straws/sticks, spinners, and even calculators with random functions. I used to use that one a lot. 

Excerpt From An Interview With A Rust Monster from Michael McCrery is honestly best ignored. But I am sure someone out there enjoyed it. 

While Sturmgeschutz & Sorcery is a silly idea from Gary Gygax, it has some practical uses. Namely, how much damage can a WWII tank do in D&D terms? The emphasis here is more Chainmail in origin than D&D, but it is still fun to read. 

Section 3: Variants

Ok, now this section is much more interesting and gives us what The Dragon did the best: providing us with new material for our games.

Peter Aronson has two articles about Illusionists. The first gives us the class to 13th level and 5th level spell ability, and the next extends this to 14th level and 7th level spell ability. Both include a bunch of new spells. It honestly looks perfect to add to my Expert Set box.

Jim Ward is back with treasures found in Tombs & Crypts.

Gary is also next with Halflings, Dwarves, Clerics & Thieves in Dungeon! In this case, the Dungeon board game. I am going to make copies of this one and put it in all my copies of Dungeon. Not only are there new rules for these player types, but there are also new treasures and new monsters. 

Doug Schwegman has a classic one for me next, the original Bard class in Statistics Regarding Classes: (Additions) - BARDS. I have played this Bard in the past and it works out great. The feel is more OD&D + Greyhawk, but that also means it would work well in Basic D&D and even AD&D. This is the one I used for my 1st Ed version of Nida. 

Joe Fischer has a "new" Ranger class in The Original Ranger Class. Again, the presentation makes it look perfect for Basic D&D.

Charles Preston Goforth, Jr. is up from The Dragon #5 with Wizard Research Rules. This expands the rules covered in OD&D and again in The Dragon #2. It is a pretty solid set of rules for spell and magic item research. I'd have to compare it to later editions, but what strikes me about it is the simplicity of it all. 

Ah. Next is the first version of the venerable Dragon Magazine Witch class in Witchcraft Supplement for Dungeons & Dragons. There is no author listed, not even Tim Kask knows who wrote it, but it is quite well written. It is overtly for OD&D Prime. Even before Greyhawk was released. The "Best Of" format has it neatly confined to 5 pages of text with some art. There is a lot to love about this article and class, really, and I am still puzzled why we never got an official witch class in old-school D&D.  Though, I suppose if we had I'd be over here droning on about something else. 

An ad for Fantasy Games Unlimited. 

John M. Seaton is up with Monkish Combat in the Arena of Promotion, or how monks gain levels officially.  It has diagrams that remind me of old martial-arts manuals. 

Two pages of tables for Solo Dungeons & Dragons Adventures by Gary Gygax, with contributions from George A. Lord and play testing by Ernie Gygax and Robert Kuntz. I mean, it looks like it could work. I know for certain if I had seen this I would have tried to write a BASIC program to mimic this. I mean it would not be very difficult at all. 

George Rihn is up with Lycanthropy - The Progress of the Disease. Which is basically discussing lycanthropes and XP progression for lycanthrope levels. It also looks pretty solid and I wonder why it didn't catch on. Though as I have mentioned many times, my Appendix N is more Hammer Horror than it is Pulp Fantasy; playing a werewolf is something that was going always come up in my games.

The Japanese Mythos are next by Jerome Arkenberg. This appeared originally in The Dragon #13 from 1978 and uses the format laid out by 1976's Gods, Demigods, & Heroes. There are three and half pages here and there are more entries than seen in the Japanese Mythos section of Deities & Demigods. 

Paul Montgomery Crabaugh and Jon Pickens have two similar articles, Random Monsters and D&D Option: Demon Generation, respectively. With a few dice rolls you can create any sort of monster; living, undead or demon, to fill your dungeons. Combine these with the How Green was my Mutant article above and you can generate thousands. Again, this is exactly the sort of thing I would have tried to program in BASIC on my old TRS-80 Color Computer 2!

I said this was packed, right?

Ok, so a lot of great articles here that hit heavy on the nostalgia, but also still have some use today. I might try that random monster generator, or more to the point recombine it all and see what I can come up with. Maybe Python or something. Could be fun.

The Witch, of course, is the star for me. Love going back and looking at this older version. 

One of the big issues I have with this collection is that while I can lump it all into a specific time, the time before I played, I miss the nuances of the times. I mean, I was very different from 1975 to 1978, and so was our hobby. I would have liked to see the date and issue each of these was published originally, like Best of Dragon Vol II does. I do miss the ads and the commentary from that time, though. 

Still, it is a fascinating, if brief, glimpse into a time that remains a foreign country to me. 

Should I do Best of Dragon Vol II? Have to think about that. 

Witchcraft Wednesdays: Expanding the War of the Witch Queens

 I mentioned a bit back that I need want to revise my War of the Witch Queens. The first idea was to redo it all for Wasted Lands. Good so far.  Plus I found some other adventures I want to add, namely The Folio Black Label #3 White Witch and Black Stone from Art of the Genre.

I also found this resource online that details all the adventures from Dungeon Magazine issues #1 to #100. These are all AD&D 1st ed, 2nd ed, and BECMI adventures with some 3rd edition. So, I went looking for all the "witch" adventures.

Here is what I found.

• Added: "Monsterquest" by Vince Garcia, Issue #10, Levels 1-3, AD&D 1st Ed.
• "The Wards of Witching Ways" Issue #11, Levels 3-5, AD&D 1st Ed.
• "Things That Go Bump in the Night" Issue #38, Levels 3-6, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "The Price of Revenge" Issue #42, Levels 4-6, AD&D 2nd Ed. Ravenloft
• "The Witch of Windcrag" Issue #51, Levels 2-3, BECMI
• "The Witch's Fiddle" Issue #54, Levels 2-5, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "Witches' Brew" Issue #67, Levels 3-5, AD&D 2nd Ed Forgotten Realms
• "Visiting Tylwith" Issue #77, Level 1, AD&D 2nd Ed.
• "The Witch of Serpent's Bridge" Issue #95, Level 3, D&D 3rd Edition

Now I just need to find these issues! Thankfully, I have a game auction coming up, and old Dungeon magazines always come up. Yeah, I know they are probably somewhere online, but I don't want those; I would rather have physical copies.

Once I review these (when I get them), I'll need to see how to integrate these into the large adventures.

I also just found out about this one, La arboleda de la Bruja Muerta (The Dead Witch's Grove). A new witch adventure AND a chance to practice more Spanish! It is not out yet.

But this one was just released!

Witch and Stone from Pacesetter Games. Grabbed it this morning. 

Looks like War of the Witch Queens will be back on!

Mail Call: Dragons from the Eric Harshbarger Collection

 I got another email from Eric Harshbarger recently offering to send me some more Dragon Magazines for my "This Old Dragon" reviews. I mean, how could I say no.

Well, the package I got was beyond my expectations!

I have not checked if I have duplicates yet, nor have I checked which ones already have posts. But I will say this, they are in far better shape than the one I know I have duplicates of.

Looking forward to getting these out to you all.

Thank you, Eric for sending these along! 

If you can, check out Eric's website.

Monstrous Monday: Typhon, the Thanatonic Titan

 I have mentioned it here many times, but Greek Mythology was my gateway to Dungeons & Dragons. I just finished watching The Blood of Zeus, formerly known as Gods & Heroes. It was great and I loved the 1st and 2nd seasons, much of the 3rd. I just didn't like how it ended. Though one of the things I loved was the Titans.  They reminded me of the Gargantua I had created back in 2013, and it was cool to see a similar idea animated.

While there were many great examples I could use as specific Gargantua, it was the depictions of the Titans and Tartarus that I really enjoyed. It did get me thinking about my Thanatonic Titans, most recently from The Left Hand Path.

In my Left Hand Path my Demonic classifications include the inhabitants prisoners of Tartarus are the Tartarians aka the Demondands and their lords the Titans.

I didn't detail the Thanatonic Titans, but they are pretty much the Greek Titans and the Norse Giants mixed together. One of my favorites was Typhon.

Typhon (Tartarian)
The Chthonic Titan, Father of Monsters

Armor Class: –5 [24]
Hit Dice: 24+24 (132 hp average)
Move: 180’ (60’), fly 120’ (40’)
To Hit AC 0: 6 [+13]
Attacks: 2 claws (2d12+6), bite (6d6) or breath (see below)
Special: Fire/poison breath, storm control, magic resistance 75%, spell-like abilities, telepathy 300’, see below
No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
Saving Throws: Fighter 24
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: Hx2, I, N
Alignment: Chaotic (Chaotic Evil)
XP: 25,000

Genius intelligence

Typhon is a colossal, serpentine titan with a hundred dragon-heads writhing about his shoulders, each belching storms, fire, or venom. His vast wings blot out the sun, and his voice shakes the earth like thunder. Taller than any titan or storm giant, Typhon is said to have once challenged the very gods for dominion over creation, only to be chained in the deepest abyss of Tartarus. From there, he still thrashes in hatred, spawning demodands (the Tartarians) as extensions of his rage.

Typhon relishes combat and throws himself in with bloody, violent abandon. He attacks with claws and a bite but also horrible magical attacks.

Breath Weapon. Once every 3 rounds, Typhon can unleash one of two breath attacks:

• Fire: 100’ long cone, 60’ wide at end, 20d10 fire damage (save vs. dragon breath for half).
• Poison Gas: 50’ radius cloud, 12d10 poison damage (save vs. dragon breath for half).

Storm Control. At will, Typhon can summon hurricane winds, torrential rain, or lightning storms in a 2-mile radius. Within the storm, visibility drops to 10’, ranged weapons are useless, and creatures must save vs. Spells or be blown prone.

Spell-like Abilities (3/day each, as 24th-level caster): Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Call Lightning, Control Weather, Earthquake, Dispel Magic.

Typhon also has formidable defenses. 

• Magic Resistance: 75%, as demons.
• Weapons: Only artifacts or +3 or better weapons can harm Typhon.
• Aura of Dread: Any mortal within 120’ must save vs. Spells or flee in terror for 2d6 rounds.

Typhon is unique. He cannot be permanently slain -if reduced to 0 hp, his form dissolves into storm clouds and writhing serpents, reforming in Tartarus within 1d100 years. He is the father of countless monsters, including demodands, chimeras, and hydras. Some sages whisper that earthquakes and great volcanic eruptions mark the struggles of Typhon beneath the earth, forever trying to break his bonds.

Encountering Typhon on the mortal plane is a sign of great calamity or anger of the gods. 

Typhon and the Demodands

When Typhon roamed the mortal world, he was the father of monsters with his mate Echidna. When Typhon was imprisoned, Echidna was dead. Typhon set out to create a new set of offspring to destroy those who had imprisoned him and killed his mate. These new monsters were the demodands.

Forgotten Realms Reviews: Elminster's Ecologies (2e)

Last time I talked about my adventures in Forgotten Realms, which was all about the urban adventures of Waterdeep. This week, I’m going to flip that lens outward, into the wilds, and take a look at a supplement that’s equal parts field guide, lore dump, and DM toolbox: Elminster’s Ecologies (1994).

Now, a small caveat. I don’t own the original boxed set with all its booklets. What I do have is the DriveThruRPG PDF bundle and the print-on-demand softcover, which compiles the whole thing into one thick book. No box, no handouts, but all nine 32-page booklets are there, and honestly, the POD version is probably easier to read anyway since this is written like an in-universe resource.

Another small caveat, one that affected my perspective. I have known about this boxed set for years. But I thought it was a collection of the various Ecology of articles from Dragon Magazine. So if you hear a subtle bit of disappointment in my tone here, that is why. Look that is no fault at all of the product in front of me. It is my fault for not setting my expectations appropriately. It *IS* objectively a good Realms product. Just not the one I thought it was all these years. 

Elminster's Ecologies (2e)

1994. by Rick Swan, Monte Cook, Eric Haddock, Anthony Pryor.

Note: For an "Elminster" themed book, there is no Ed Greenwood in this as far as I can tell. 

Elminster’s Ecologies does something a little unusual for TSR at the time. Instead of another city box or adventure series, this one focuses entirely on environments. The conceit is that Elminster (and his “field correspondents”) are writing in-character about the natural world of the Realms. It’s like Volo’s Guides, but instead of inns and alehouses, you get trees, rivers, beasts, and bogs.

The box contained nine booklets:

Explorer’s Manual. The “master key” of the set, with Elminster’s musings, excerpts from his ongoing natural history of Faerûn, color-coded encounter tables, and the enigmatic “Rules of the Rabbit.”

Cormanthor. The ancient forest, its trees and mystical wildlife, and the rumors that still drift beneath the boughs.

Anauroch. A deep dive into the desert: the shifting sands, the High Ice, the Plain of Standing Stones, even the Underdark beneath it all. Survival, monsters, and lost secrets abound.

Coastal Aquatic Lands – The Sea of Fallen Stars. The largest inland sea in the Realms gets its due, from fish to krakens, with sea stories and notes on the cultures clinging to its shores.

The Cormyrean Marshes. Brother Twick’s journal paints the swamps as treacherous, full of dangerous monsters and stranger rumors.

The Stonelands and the Goblin Marches. Rugged terrain, fading wildlife, the ever-present goblin threat, and a few truly massive beasts.

The Thunder Peaks and the Storm Horns. Two mountain ranges, with their harsh climates, common life, monsters of the peaks, and local legends.

The Great Gray Land of Thar. A bleak, arid region with hard conditions and stranger mysteries—exactly the sort of place Elminster would call “unpleasantly educational.”

The Settled Lands. Farmlands, villages, and the borders of civilization. Here you get a look at the everyday ecologies that brush up against the wilderness.

Each booklet follows a familiar structure: a personal introduction, a survey of the land, detailed notes on monsters and natural life, and then “rumors and legends” that a DM can immediately use as hooks.

What makes this set shine is how it reframes monsters and encounters. You don’t just get “roll d8, 1-2 owlbear.” Instead, you get owlbears in context, how they live, what they eat, how other monsters avoid them, and how a random traveler might actually run into one. A marsh isn’t just a backdrop for lizard men, it’s a dangerous, interconnected ecosystem where the lizard men, the crocodiles, and the giant frogs are all part of the same web.

The encounter tables in the Explorer’s Manual really drive this home. They’re organized by biome and color-coded to match the booklets, making it easy to swap in details wherever your PCs happen to wander.

One thing though. There are no Monstrous Compendium pages. Not only there isn't even a good section to "cut out" and put into my Monstrous Compendium binders. Yes, this has much more to do about me and what I *thought* this product was rather than what it actually is.

The Realms in ’94

The timing of this release is also worth noting. TSR was really leaning into “in-character writing” in the early ’90s: Volo’s Guides, Pages from the Mages, and now Elminster’s Ecologies. Cormyr was getting lots of love, with its own sourcebook, adventures, and now half this box dedicated to its borders and neighbors. The in-character style is fun and gives a lot of Realms flavor. But sometimes the “in-character” voice gets in the way of practical DM info. Still, it is what I want from the Realms; it is what separates it from other fantasy worlds. 

Sinéad, Nida, and Company

And what of my characters in the Realms? Well, Sinéad and Nida are still lingering in Waterdeep, but the pull eastward grows stronger. The road through the Heartlands is long, and as I flip through Elminster’s Ecologies, I can’t help but see it as a ready-made travelogue for their journey.

If they leave the City of Splendors behind, their path east will naturally thread through the Dalelands and into Cormanthor. That’s one of the booklets covered in the Ecologies, and it’s a perfect setting for a side trek. Sinéad, with her pagan background, would be spellbound by the great trees and the old magic of the forest, an echo of her homeland, but deeper and stranger. Nida, more practical, might be the one keeping her eyes on the monsters lurking in those woods.

From there, they could skirt Anauroch. I don’t know if I want them to cross the desert outright, but even brushing its borders could provide some fantastic challenges. The Ecologies gives me survival notes, monsters adapted to the sands, and whispers of the Underdark beneath, just the kind of flavor that could delay their progress, or tempt them off the road with legends of buried secrets.

The Sea of Fallen Stars booklet also feels useful. Even if the party doesn’t cross the sea directly, they’ll certainly pass along its shores. Tales of the Dragonmere or the Dragon Reach could add both color and danger, pirates, sahuagin, or worse. It’s a reminder that not all travel is overland.

And then there are the mountains. The Thunder Peaks and the Storm Horns sit along possible eastward routes, and both regions are detailed here. Jaromir, whom I keep playing less as a “barbarian” and more like a warrior of the Fianna, would feel at home in the high places, testing his strength against mountain predators. I could easily see a ranger path opening up for him here, with the ecology booklets giving me just the right kinds of encounters. The book is fun, and it gives me a lot to think about. While I have said that Fighter with the Barbarian kit is a good choice for him, I might see if I can change him to Ranger. And I need to see if I have a copy of the Complete Ranger's Handbook OR I might cheat and look ahead to see what the Spellbound boxed set has for me. 

Finally, Rhiannon. If she is to embrace her Rashemi witch heritage, then a long journey through these liminal, witch-haunted spaces seems exactly right. The Cormyrean Marshes, with their strange monsters and whispered rumors, would be a fine testing ground for her. She may not yet be home, but the marshes, with their witches’ whispers, could foreshadow what awaits her in Rashemen. More ideas for my Witches' Secret Journey.

So the question remains, will Sinéad and Nida follow Rhiannon and Jaromir eastward? That was always my idea, but Waterdeep’s siren call is strong. And I have so many ideas for Waterdeep.

The Ecologies gives me the scaffolding for either path. If they stay west, they linger in the greatest city of the Sword Coast. If they go east, they’ll wander through forests, deserts, swamps, and mountains that feel alive, thanks to this odd little box set from 1994.

This is their travel guide, their road map, and the background in which the characters grow. 

DriveThruRPG PDF and PoD

The scans of this product are top notch. The PDFs are very clear and very sharp. This translates well into the Print on Demand copy as well. Maybe one of the best I have seen in a while to be honest.

There is a lot of color throughout. It does make me wish I had grabbed this as a boxed set when I had the chance. My opinions of it when from high, to low, back to high now.

Final Thoughts

Elminster’s Ecologies is one of those quirky TSR experiments that I’m glad exists. It’s not essential Realms material, but it makes the wilderness feel alive in a way few supplements ever try to do. If Forgotten Realms Adventures was about the cities, this is about everything in between: the swamps, forests, deserts, mountains, and seas that adventurers must cross to get from one tavern to the next.

This is not a game product you sit down and use in one session. It is a game product you grab in game sessions when the characters are in the right places. It is used throughout your stay in the 2nd Ed Realms. Ok, it can be used in every edition to be honest. Ignore the minor edition-specific material and go with it.

For DMs running wilderness-heavy campaigns, this is a goldmine of ideas. For Realms fans, it’s a snapshot of TSR in the ’90s, trying something a little different. And for me, even just in POD form, it’s another reminder that the Realms isn’t just kings and wizards, it’s owls in the trees, frogs in the marshes, and strange rules about rabbits.

Witches of Appendix N: Fritz Leiber

When we talk about the foundations of Dungeons & Dragons, the names that come up most often are the obvious ones: Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jack Vance, among others. But alongside Conan and hobbits stands another set of icons, the roguish duo of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, born from the imagination of Fritz Leiber.

In Appendix N, Leiber's entry is "Leiber, Fritz. 'Fafhrd & Gray Mouser' series; et al." So that leaves me a lot of room to explore his works. 

Leiber’s tales of Lankhmar gave us thieves’ guilds, a decadent city, and sword-and-sorcery camaraderie that would become staples of the game. And a couple of tales where witchcraft plays an important role.

The Snow Women (1970)

Before he became a hero of Lankhmar, Fafhrd was a youth of the cold North, raised among the Snow Women. This community of women was led by Mor, Fafhrd’s mother, who dominates both him and the other men of their tribe through will, manipulation, and a kind of communal witchcraft.

The Snow Women are not cackling hags with bubbling cauldrons; their magic is subtler. It lies in the power of custom, ritual, and fear. Their witchcraft is not just spellwork but social control, and it casts a frost over every relationship in the story. For young Fafhrd, escaping their grip is as much an act of rebellion against sorcery as it is against his mother’s authority.

This tale shows witchcraft not as something learned in a grimoire, but as an inheritance and an atmospher a cold wind that shapes destinies.  In many ways they remind me of tales of Finnish witchcraft. I have a hard time reading about these women and not think of Louhi, the Crone (and Maiden too) of Pohjola. This leads us to Iggwilv, the "spiritual daughter" of Louhi and Mor.

In the Witch’s Tent (1968)

Later, in the story In the Witch’s Tent (collected in "Swords Against Wizardry"), Leiber presents us with another kind of witch. Here, Fafhrd and the Mouser find themselves consulting a prophetess. The scene is thick with atmosphere: the tent filled with smoke, the seeress exhaling her visions like opium haze, the sense that knowledge comes at a cost.

This witch is less about domination and more about liminality. She occupies that familiar role of the oracle, standing at the threshold between worlds. But in true Leiber fashion, she is not a benign guide. Her words are dangerous, her presence uncanny, and the tent itself feels like a trap. The scene could be dropped whole into any RPG session as the archetypal fortune-teller who reveals just enough truth to get the characters into trouble.

Conjure Wife (1943)

If Leiber’s Fafhrd and Mouser stories gave us witches in the context of sword-and-sorcery, it was his first novel, Conjure Wife, that put witchcraft at the center of the narrative.

Or as I have said in the past, “Between Bewitched and Rosemary’s Baby lies Leiber’s Tansy.”

Norman Saylor, a rational-minded professor, discovers that his wife, Tansy, has been secretly practicing protective magic. When he convinces her to stop, he learns the hard way that witchcraft is not merely superstition, and that rival witches have been circling all along.

As I wrote in my earlier review:

Conjure Wife has been held up as sort of a prototype of the modern American Witch tale.  Seemingly normal wives in a small East Coast town married to normal, rational men of science and academia turn out to be powerful witches engaged in a silent secret war of magic.

... They were intelligent (more so than their husbands), clever and some down right evil and all were powerful. By the end of the book, you are left feeling that the men in this tale are really no more than children, a bit dim ones at that.

This is what makes Conjure Wife powerful: the way it sets witchcraft not in ancient forests or ruined temples, but in the kitchens and parlors of mid-century America. The witches here are faculty wives, the battleground is tenure politics, and the weapons are hexes whispered between cocktail parties. It is both psychological horror and social commentary, and it remains one of the most influential witchcraft novels of the 20th century.

It has also been made into three different movies, Weird Woman (1944), Burn, Witch, Burn aka "Night of the Eagle" (1962), and Witches' Brew (1980).

Our Lady of Darkness (1977)

Decades later, Leiber returned to occult horror with Our Lady of Darkness, a novel steeped in the landscapes of San Francisco and the esoteric science of “megapolisomancy,” a fictional occult science that focuses on harnessing the supernatural forces present in large cities. There is even a connection to Clark Aston Smith.

This isn’t a witch story in the conventional sense, but it resonates with the same archetypal power. Its date allows me to make a claim for it as "sliding into home" just barely.

At its heart, Our Lady of Darkness is about the anima, that Jungian figure of the feminine that exists within the male psyche. She is muse and terror, desire and destruction, and in Leiber’s hands, she becomes a literal haunting presence. The Lady of the title is both a psychological construct and a supernatural force, a liminal witch of the soul.

This is a theme I’ve explored myself in the character of Larina Nix. Larina, too, is not just a witch but an embodiment of anima at once familiar, archetypal, and unsettling. She represents how the witch figure can exist in both myth and the inner landscape of the imagination.

While Our Lady of Drakness may not have influenced D&D at all, there are a lot of things here you can find in the RPG Kult. Sadly, this book is nowhere near as good as Leiber's other works, especially Conjure Wife. 

Closing Thoughts

When it comes to witches, Leiber made one significant contribution: Conjure Wife. The Snow Women and the prophetess of In the Witch’s Tent add atmosphere to Fafhrd’s world, but they are more color than core. Our Lady of Darkness circles the same archetypal ground from a Jungian angle, but it isn’t witchcraft in the usual sense.

Yet even if these stories didn’t leave much of a mark on D&D, they left a mark on me. Conjure Wife remains one of the best examples of modern witchcraft horror, and its faculty wives locked in a secret magical war still resonate. The others, Mor’s cold grip, the seeress in her smoky tent, and the anima-haunted towers of San Francisco, add layers to Leiber’s legacy and to my own sense of how witches live in story: sometimes social, sometimes symbolic, sometimes spectral, but always there. 

25 Years Dungeons & Dragons 3.0

It was Monday, September 11, 2000.

I actually remember it pretty well. I went to my Favorite Local Game Store and I picked up the new Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. I grabbed the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Master's Guide and the Creature Collection, the first OGL monster book released. I had to wait a bit longer for the official Monster Manual.

That was 25 years ago this week.

 When D&D 3.0 hit the game stores in 2000, I was ready for it. I had been away from D&D for several years and was eager to get back into it. So, D&D 3.0 was the right game for me at the right time. In truth, there is still a lot I love about D&D 3.x, and significant advances were made in terms of game design and lore.  

This edition was new. So new that, unlike the past editions, this one was not very backward compatible. This was fine since Wizards of the Coast (now dropping the TSR logo) had provided a conversion guide. The books were solid. All full color and the rules had expanded to fix some of the issues of previous versions of D&D. Armor class numbers got larger as the armor got stronger, as opposed to lower numbers being better. Charts for combat were largely eliminated, the number on the sheet was what you had to roll against. Everyone could multiclass, all the species (races) could be any class without restrictions, though some were better at it than others, and everyone had skills. 

But the most amazing thing about 3rd Edition D&D was that, aside from a few protected monsters and names, Wizards of the Coast gave the whole thing away for free! Yes, the books with art cost money. But the rules, just a text dump, were free for everyone to download. It was called the System Reference Document or SRD. It was all the rules so that 3rd-party publishers could produce their own D&D compatible material. With these rules, you could play D&D without the books. There was no art and no "fluff" text, but everything was there.

D&D 3rd edition had an good run from 2000 to about 2008. 

I played it quite a bit to be honest and there is a lot about it I still love. It was the game system I used to teach my kids how to play and one I still enjoy going back to. It is also one of the few editions of D&D I never really played much. I was always a DM. So other than a version of Larina and Johan Werper IV, I don't have a lot of characters for 3e. The only time I ever got to play it was at conventions, mostly Gen Con.

I loved the 3rd Edition's multiclassing and, honestly, I loved Prestige Classes. But things got ridiculous at high levels. Ever try stating up a high level character from scratch? But I would still play it if given the chance. 

So here is to 25 years of D&D 3.0. You were not the perfect game, but your were perfect for me at the time.