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. 

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.

This Old Dragon #154

Today, we head back to the dawn of the 1990s. It's February 1990. I am working on my undergrad degree in Psych and decided to pick up a minor in Computer Science. I have some great friends, a girlfriend in the last half of the term, and I am having a great time. My roomate's kid brother comes to stay with us a couple of days, I opt to stay at my girlfriend's for a bit. But he has this really annoying friend who came with him playing all these bootlegs in my tape deck telling me I need to listen because this band he has been following is going to be HUGE. I ignore him. The band as it turns out, is Soundgarden. Maybe I should have listened.

The number one song on the radio is "Opposites Attract," a duo by Paula Abdul and an animated cat. The number one film was "Driving Miss Daisy" with Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy. On the shelves and tables is Issue #154 of this old Dragon.

I am getting to the bottom of this giant box of Dragons. Many of them don't even smell musty anymore. As usual, this one is missing a cover. This one features a "war dragon" with an undead rider by Bob Eggleton. 

The Letters section is a bit thin this month. Sage Advice covers some spells from AD&D 2nd Edition. 

James Ward is up with The Game Wizards: Angry Mothers from Heck. Basically Ward talks about the removal of Demons and Devils from AD&D 2nd ed as an appeal to the "Angry Mother Syndrome" which he sees as a good, but somewhat limiting policy. He does conclude that appealing more to heroic motives rather than just wanton killing of hack-and-slash is a noble endeavor. I don't disagree, but I also like fighting demons and devils. 

The Forum covers clerics, the relative merits of the D&D vs AD&D 1st ed vs AD&D 2nd games. I *get* the discussion, but I have admitted here before we so readily mixed the rules that seems like a non-issue to me. 

We get to the featured section of this issue, The Art of Making War. 

Our first article is from Eileen Lucas, with Warrior Kings and Empire Builders, where she borrows from history, and you should as well, to define your warrior leaders. She uses Julius Ceaser and Charlemagne as her examples. 

Eric Oppen is next with The Making of a Paladin.  A fun article about the purpose of playing a paladin. Oppen makes the claim that paladin is one of the most popular class. I can see that. I love playing paladins. Even today paladin is one of the classes most used in Baldur's Gate III.

Heraldry, politics, and feudalism in fantasy campaigns is next in Thomas M. Kane's All in the Family. Covers details on how heraldry originated and how they are designed.  It is a fairly detailed article to be honest. 

For King and Country from Dan Salas gives a new campaign model where the PCs are called to duty by their king. Well new at the time. This sort of game was well covered by Pendragon, Chivalry & Sorcerery, and AD&D's own Birthright.

Thomas M. Kane is back with another long article with How to Win Wars and Influence People. This one grabs details from AD&D 1st ed, 2nd ed and even battle system. There is a lot here, and I am wondering if this would have helped in the massive war I had run about 2-3 years before this article.  It is a great article that I am not 100% sure I get all of. I mean I like massive battles, every so often, but I don't run enough of them to have a lot of experience here.

A bunch ads and we are done with the special feature. While my issue has no cover, it does still have the GURPS poster intact.

Ken Rolston is up with Role-Playing Reviews with three Sci-Fantasy games, and all three are favorites of mine; Shadowrun, Spelljammer, and Space: 1889.

He loved Space: 1889, calling it "pure pleasure" and "comes with my unreserved recommendation." I concur. It might have been this review that made me want to check out this game. He felt Shadowrun was "adorable and surprising" and "impressive, exciting, and entertaining." Again, I concur. I remember driving back to University one night from my home town and talking with my old highschool DM who was getting ready to transfer there.  We talked about his Shadowrun campaign the whole 2.5 hour dirve down. I now have his old Shadowrun book. He also loved Spelljammer but felt that the AD&D 2nd ed rules was it's weakest point. 

I have to admit this article is what I remember the best of this whole issue. I was thinking how cool it would be to mix magic and sci-fi. An alchemy I have been trying to perfect for a while. You see in my Star Wars posts and certainly my BlackStar idea. 

Our fiction section is from all stars. Raistlin and the Knight of Solamnia from none other than Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, with illustrations from Larry Elmore. 

The Lessers, Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk are up with The Role of Computers. This month cover the Mines of Titan, M1 Tank Platoon, Star Fleet II, Ghostbusters II, and David Wolf: Secret Agent. I do note that most of the games are now PC-DOS games for the IBM compatible machines. I do miss seeing the Apple, Mac, and even Amiga games. 

Convention Calendar is next with the hottest cons of the winter and spring of 1990. I swear there were more cons then than now. Cons now are bigger for sure, but there doesn't seem to be as many. 

Novel Ideas comes to us from Will Larson and covers the novels coming out of TSR in the next months. They are "Dark Horse" by Mary Herbert, "Warsprite" by Jefferson Swycaffer, and "Nightwatch" a Greyhawk Adventures novel from Robin Bailey. I will freely admit, none of these sound familiar to me. 

Ah, now something I DO recognize, The Voyages of the Princess Ark, Part 2 from Bruce Heard. One day I will collect all of these. For the moment though I'll keep this one to the side. 

Dragonmirth gives us some comics. I recognize Yamara of course. But nothing in color.  There is a jab at the "Trump Game" which I am pretty happy to see. 

TSR Previews lets us know what is coming up in the next couple of months. More Spelljammer, more Monstrous Compendiums, and even a Buck Rogers novel. 

Marcus L. Rowland is stuck at the end of the issue with "Who Was That Masked Android?" overtly for Marvel super Heroes, but can be adapted to other supers games. 

We end with the small ads of Gamers Guide. There is a sub-section here dedicated to Play by Mail games. These were about to head to the same category as Ham Radio; still loved but by an ever decreasing fandom. 

All in all, not a bad issue, but not one that kept my attention then or even today, to be honest. 

This Old Dragon: Issue #152

I pulled a Dragon for today, started in on it, and got about a quarter through it before I realized it was one I had done already. I had a duplicate in my stack. Ah well. So instead, we go back to December 1989, the Eve of the 1990s. On the radio "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel and "Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Collins dominate. Gunge is still a little bit away for the mainstream. "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" and "Back to the Future II" dominate the box office. And on game tables and shelves everywhere is issue # 152 of This Old Dragon!

My copy lacks a cover, so I grabbed this image off of my Dragon Magazine CD-ROM. All these later and that purchase keeps paying off.

Our cover is by none other than the illustrious and late Jennell Jaquays. 

Letters discuss the issues of the day, namely more about the über-ridiculous character Waldorf and challenges to his title. Hopefully that is the last of that. Nitpicks on Hawks vs. Falcons and some bits on spells and dragon hunting. 

In his Editorial, Roger E. Moore discusses helping others in hard times, which was a novelty then and is talked about more and more now. In particular, he mentioned that gaming conventions rarely give to charity, whereas now that is much more commonplace. 

Forum has some discussions on using other game systems to aid D&D DMs (Marvel Super Heroes is given as the example), a thought that D&D in not really Medieval Europe, but 20th Century Earth where magic has prevented technology from advancing (neat idea really) and some ideas on various humanoids played intelligently. 

Sage Advice gives us some rule clarifications on the NEW AD&D 2nd Edition rules. 

Our Special Feature of this issue is all about the Underdark. Ok, this could be fun. Since I had to switch gears, I am discovering all of this issue as I write.

Up first, a nice surprise, Tony Jones (a name I don't recall) is up with The Ecology of the Umber Hulk. It's a rare (for the time) non-Ed Greenwood ecology article. Also I admit a certain fondness for the Umber Hulk. I think it was because when I first read about him in the Monster Manual, he was so different than other monsters I had seen before. Like all good Ecology of articles the details here can be used in any edition/version of the game. While the Umber Hulk growth table would need to be adjusted per game, the data is still good. There is even a good bibliography. 

Ads for Buck Rogers books and Activision video games. 

Thomas M. Kane is up with In a Cavern, In a Canyon. This covers metallurgy in fantasy games, though the emphasis is obviously AD&D here. It is still good and useful information and again, easily adaptable to new versions of the game. 

Another ad for the Science Fiction Book Club, which I am sad to report, has shut down after 70 years.

The Wanderers Below is a good set of random encounter tables from Buddy Pennington. The art is from module S4 by Jim Holloway and the list could be AD&D 2nd ed or 1st, I can't really tell to be honest. Likely works for both.

We break up our feature with Role-Playing Reviews from Jim Bambra. He covers Twilight: 2000, Top Secret S.I. and GURPS High Tech. 

Registration page for Gen Con 1990.

Eric Oppen is back with Servants of the Jeweled Dagger, a bit abotu the lives and habits of the duegar, the gray dwarves. It is a little like an Ecology of article, but less game stats. Not a bad piece at all. I read while thinking about the duegar you encounter in Baldur's Gate 3. It still works. 

None other than R.A. Salvatore is up for the fiction section The First Notch.

Greg Minter is next, is what is a loose interpretation on today's theme, In Quest of Adventure. It covers all sorts of quests, but for me the real treat is the Stephen Fabian art. 

My issue lacks the giant poster advertised. No idea what it was. 

The late Jim Ward waxes philosophical on "what do the simple folk do?" in The Game Wizards. He discusses well, I am not sure, it is a little rambling. 

The Lessers are all back with more video game reveiws in The Role of Computers. They loved DragonWars for the Apple II, and enjoyed The Kristal for the Amiga. They also got in a couple of MS-DOS games like Beyond the Black Hole and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. From what I can tell these are graphic (as in EGA) games and not text-based ones. An important distinction at this time that will soon no longer matter. 

TSR Previews gives us the new games and accessories for November and December 1989. A few novels to support the Top Secret, Dragonlance, and Buck Rogers lines.  Monstrous Compendium vol 3, the Bloodstone Lands, Pool of Radiance novel, and Kara-Tur trail maps leave no doubt that the Forgotten Realms is the darling of the time. 

Spider-Man to Wed Vanna White! from Fraser Sherman gives us the best article title of the issue. He discusses how to use real-world events in your Marvel Super Heroes games. I just watched the first two episodes of the Disney+ "Daredevil Born Again" and I can say Marvel does not have an issue using real world events in their tales.

Robert Bigelow has more new miniatures for us in Through the Looking Glass. I rather like the Joker and Batman minis from Grenadier Models. Very much in support of the Batman RPG. They have a real Neal Adams meet Jim Lee feel to them.

The Convention Calendar covers the last bit of 1989 and the winter of 1990. In general, I think there were more conventions back then. Am I wrong? I don't know. The Egyptian Campaign is listed. I can't recall if I went then or not. 

Not to be forgotten, we still have Make the Most of Your Missions from Merle and Jackie Rasmussen. This covers mission starters for the Top Secret SI game. 

Dragonmirth has our comics. Gamers Guide has our small ads. Among the ads is one to allow you edit your IBM versions of characters for Might and Magic and Pool of Radiance games. Just $15! Lots of ads produced on what look like AppleWriter printers.  Walter Moore will also draw your character, also just $15. Wonder if he is still in business?

Back page ads for the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums and Spelljamer. 

So not a bad issue really. The special feature had a lot of material and nearly all of it is still useful today. The tone has shifted completely to AD&D 2nd edition and away from 1st Edition or Basic/BECMI. This will continue until all other games except those from TSR are shut out. Dragon was not unique with this, all game magazines were doing this. 

The underdark features were good and ones I can see myself using. I still love looking at all the old ads too.

This Old Dragon: Issue #176

 Time once again to dip into the box of old Dragon Magazines under my desk. Today's magazine takes us back to December 1991. AD&D 2nd Edition is the new kid on the block, but there are still AD&D 1st ed holdovers. Hook and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country are ruling the box office. In the US Michael Jackson's "Black or White" knocks out the superior (in my opinion) "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" by P.M. Dawn. And on the magazine racks and shelves is Issue #176 of This Old Dragon.

As was common in the 1990s, this is a "feature" issue, and this month's feature was elves. Always a winner, to be honest. The cover art featuring elves fighting a group of goblins and gnolls, comes to us via Lissanne Lake. She would go on to do work for White Wolf and the Affliction: Salem 1692 game. 

The cover also tells me there is a Giant poster inside. But my issue doesn't have that. Neither does my Dragon DC-ROMs. A search reveals it to be a poster of the cover of Dragon #166.

Open to an ad for GDW's Dark Conspiracy. Nice to still see ads for other companies and games here. There is also an ad for "The NEW Easy to Master" Dungeons & Dragons Basic boxed set.  I covered this set a while back and it is fun.

Letters covers the concerns over the lack of a proper African campaign setting or myths in D&D, which  the new Egyptian art in the AD&D 2nd Ed Legends and Lore getting a particular call out. 

Is that Isis or Freya?

Dragon responds back with various excuses where a "Yeah, you are right, we should do better" would have been enough. 

Roger Moore's Editorial touches on this in a way. Providing some forward-thinking on how we should deal with people who are different from us, be that other ethnicities or other species (in D&D and ShadowRun terms). He does point to Star Trek the Next Generation as an example. 

More ads. Which, and lets be honest, are as fun as the articles. In this one for Waldenbooks (pour one out all you Otherworlds and Preferred Reader members out there!) and has some new D&D books on the way. One if the Ravenloft Van Richten's Guide to Vampires...and Other Undead. Ok so the content and cover changed from this to publication. Not the first time we have seen this. Nor the last.

We now get into our featured section on the Elves.

Servants of the Seldarine by Chris Perry covers and updates what we know about the gods and goddess of the Elves (and Drow) to AD&D 2nd Edition, with a bit of a lean in to the Forgotten Realms. I also have Monster Mythology sitting here on my desk for my next foray into the Realms, along with The Drow of the Underdark, so this is timely. This article predates Monster Mythology. While the information here for elven specialty priests will be superseded by newer books, the information is great to have and I'll add it to my cache of random Realms lore. 

If You Need Help - Ask the Drow! from Ed Greenwood and Steven E. Schend also adds more to the total of Realms lore. This time, obviously, about the Drow. This article also ties in with FOR2 The Drwo of the Underdark. There is a map of the Promenade of Elistraee, the "good" Drow Goddess and covers her specialty priests in more detail. 

And that appears to be it for the elves special feature. 

Forum covers some of the topics of the day, as usual, mostly related to past issues. The topic de jour deals with "psycho-pathic players" from issue #172's Forum. I am unsure if the authors' mean "players" or "characters."  The examples do lean in on characters, but the players have something to do with it. No advice is given really. 

Friend of the Other Side Bruce Heard is up with his Voyage of the Princess Ark, now up to Part 23. If you love Mystara/The Known World as much as I do then these are great reads. Nothing sets the tone for the BECMI line quite as well as these do. There is fiction here, but enough playable crunch to keep me coming back for more. 

The Convention Calendar gives us the run-down on the latest gaming conventions of the Winter of 91-92. None local to me though.

Ad for Vampire the Masquerade. Wonder if it will do well?

Spike Y. Jones has advice for "dressing up" your modern games in Propping Up Your Campaign. Though I can't see any GM wearing a suit and tie to a game session. Though there is some fun advice here. Among the things it suggests is raiding your little brother's toy box (with permission). A whiel back we did a huge cleaning and took a bunch of old toys from when the kids were little to WINGS. We kept anything that might be good for D&D props like toy dinosaurs and even some weird knock-off Pokemon and Yugioh toys we bought on a trip to Chicago's China Town. 

TSR Previews covers what is new for December 1991 and January 1992. Your mail-in registration for Gen Con 1992 is on the next page. Early bird entries much be post marked by January 31, 1992. 

The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia and Kirk) are back in The Role of Computers. Games covered are Heart of China (5 stars), J.B. Harlod Murder Club (4 stars), Phantasy Star III (4 stars), A-10 Tank Killer (5 stars), and Space Quest IIII (4 stars). 

Michael G. Ryan gives us this month's fiction piece, Time for an Experiment. 

Doug Niles is up with Role-Playing Reviews. He covers The Awful Green Things from Outer Space by Tom Wham and from Steven Jackson Games. This is an update of the same game that appeared in the pages of Dragon #28 all the way back in 1979. Niles still loves it. The Scotland Yard game from Ravensburger (German company fairly well known for their puzzles today) is a "whodunit" game where the players track down "Mr. X." It honestly sounds fun. He also covers the Battle of the Bulge game from who else, Avalon Hill. 

Marvel-Phile is up with lesser known characters like La Bandera, Windshear, and Witchfire. Ok, so I did already know Witchfire.

Ah. I knew thos toys we saved would come in handy! Gregory W. Detwiler gives us prehistoric beasts in Playing in the Paleozoic. These are AD&D 2nd Ed monster stats, but not the full monster listings with Combat and Habitat/Ecology sections. Still. We went to the Field Museum and the Illinois State Museum more times than I can recall. So we have tons of plastic prehistoric monsters here. This one is fun!

Skip Williams is up with Sage Advice. This time, covering the effects of various wizard spells. 

Not a review, not an ad, but somewhere in between is Novel Ideas by Marlys Heeszel. This time we cover the new R. A. Salvatore novel Canticle.

David Wise updates us on the AD&D Collector Cards in The Game Wizards. 

DragonMirth has our comics for the month including Yamara and Twilight Empire. 

Gamers Guide has our small ads. Ads for play-by-mail games (those will soon die out), music tracks for your games on cassette. Wargames West has their ad. A couple of ads look like they were printed out on a Macintosh pritner. Sign of the times. 

We end with Robert Bigelow's reviews of new minis in Through the Looking Glass. At the time of this issue I had maybe one or two minis I had saved up for. I read this ad now on a desk covered in all the minis I have been printing from our 3D printer. Currently all the lords of the Hels and then some are sitting here waiting for a coat of primer. 

So. A fun issue really, but the "special feature" was a little weak even if the articles themselves were pretty good. Loved the Paleozoic monsters the most really. 

This Old Dragon: Issue #115

I think I have enough time left in this year to do another one of these. My box of old Dragons, though, is getting a little lighter these days. Today's issue takes us all the way back to November of 1986. My old High School DM had just been medically discharged from the Air Force due to arthritis, something that would plague him to the point that the last time I saw him, he was using a cane. I was a Senior in High School working on College applications and trying to get in as many AP math courses as I could. "Amanda" by Boston from their highly successful "Third Stage" album was the biggest song on the radio, which for me at the time was WYMG. "Crocodile Dundee" had dominated the screens for the last two month making Paul Hogan a household name, and on game store shelves and gaming tables all over was Issue #115 of This Old Dragon.

Our cover art is one of my time favorites from Den Beauvais. It might not get as much nostalgia as his chess ones, but this one is every bit as good. 

Letters is dominated by kudos for the Role of Computers feature and a demand for more AD&D computer games and aids. 

Roger Moore is now our new editor-in-chief of Dragon, taking on the role about a week prior. We were only vaguely aware at the time, or *I* was only vaguely aware, that there had been a huge shake-up at TSR.  Moore lets us know, maybe even reassuring us, that there are more great things coming, like supporting the Masters and Immortals sets for D&D and the newer AD&D books. 

Forum covers the big issues of the day. Namely was the cover of issue #114 considered softcore pornography and what is all this talk about 2nd Edition! I own all the 1st edition books and I don't replace them all now. 

Our featured topic this month is Thieves. In fact, this might be one of the first of the official "Special Attractions" or theme issues. I never associated these with Roger Moore's tenure, but it could be the case.

Lords of the Night by Eric Oppen covers thieves and thieves' guilds. I remember reading this one with great interest back in the day, and was the beginning of my thoughts on the Urban Survival Guide.

Friend of the Other Side Vince Garcia follows up with A Den of Thieves, which also covers guilds and how they exist in relation to each other and their city. It is, like much of Vince's work, very detailed.

Vince follows this up with The Art of Climbing Walls. This expands the thief climb walls skill. nearly 40 years later, we are using a single d20 and a single skill for all thief abilities. Another article, Getting Up in the World by Robin Jenkins also expands on this skill.

Eric Oppen is back with Robin Jenkins in Honor Among Thieves which covers the rules in which thief guilds operate. 

And Vince Garcia is back again with Tools of the (Thieving) Trade which covers, as you guessed, thief tools. 

All said an told about 27 pages of thief information. I ate it up. My main character at the time was Nigel "Death" Blade, a thief and assassin. Larina was still very low level at this point and Johan II was involved in a long prolonged war.

Speaking of holy fighters, James A. Yates is up with an idea that has seen a lot of print in Dragon, but not something that would become commonplace until AD&D 2nd Ed. Hammer of Thor, Spear of Zeus details what weapons clerics of the various Deities & Demigods Legends & Lore Gods can use. 

Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth covers all sorts of snakes in the AD&D game by Ray Hamel and David Hage.

Ed Greenwood is up next with Airs of Ages of Past, which gives us nine magical harps from the Forgotten Realms.

"There's Something on the Floor..." by Reid Beutler features some random tables for determining what is found on, in, and of dungeon floor design. 

Here is a rarity for the time, a non-Greenwood Ecology of article...almost.  The Ecology of the Harpy is split into two articles. The first, Songs of Beauty... comes to us from Barbara E. Curtis. The second, Songs of Death is by Ed Greenwood. Both work well together and I get the impression that the Curtis article was first and Greenwood added his piece afterwards. That's fine, and let's be honest, Elminster *is* the authority on these things in the Realms. The articles are a good read.

Elven Armies and Dwarves-At-Arms by James A. Yates details what sort of troops the demi-humans can muster. I would not run into the need for this one very often, but when I need it, it is nice to have here. You would be excused if your thoughts wander to the Battle of Five Armies. 

More dungeon exploring from Dan Snuffin in Door Number One, Door Number Two, or... You, it dawns on me that modern players would not know what a Monte Hall style play is OR even why we call it Monte Hall. Anyway, this it a bunch of random tables for various dungeon doors. I used to give the Monty Hall Problem in my Intro to Stats course when discussing probability. Really messes with people's heads.

Getting out of the dungeon and into the world of spies we have Stayin' Alive from John J. Terra. This would have been a good bit to have read back when I was investigating the R.I.P. RPG a bit ago. Not for any reason than to give me some more insight on how to play Top Secret. Which is exactly what this article was going for. Later on we also get more Top Secret material in Kevin Marzahl's When Only the Best Will Do. This covers Heckler & Koch weapons. 

The Role of Books by John C. Bunnell reviews newly published sci-fi and fantasy books from the gamer's perspective. This includes some Find Your Fate books, the Lords of the Middle Dark.

Nice ad for DC Heroes 1st Edition. The big DC Heroes Kickstarter just wrapped, so this will all be new again. 

Few more pages down a big full color ad for Traveller: 2300.

TSR Profiles features Roger E. Moore and Bill Larson.

Previews gives us the products coming for the end of 1986. These include a couple of my favorites M3 Twilight Calling by Tom Moldvay and RS1 Red Sonja Unconquered. For the new year of 1987 module H2 Mines of Bloodstone and a new DA2 Temple of the Frog from non other than Dave Arneson and David Ritchie is on the way. 

While the Ares section is a thing of the past now it seems, the back half of the magazine is still devoted to sci-fi and Marvel. 

An Interstellar Armory by Gus Monter for Star Frontiers Knight Hawks covers new weapons and defenses. 

Gamers' Guide has our small ads. All the usual suspects for 1986 are here. Wargames West, Gamescience and others. 

The Convention Calendar covers November, December, and January. None local to me (either now or then). 

We get four pages of Wormy. Tramp would soon move south to Carbondale and I would be a couple of months behind him. We lived in the same town for 4+ years and I never even knew. A page of Dragonmirth and three pages of SnarfQuest.

Honestly, a pretty good issue and a preview of what we would see in the Roger E. Moore, back half of the 80s, era. More special features and less content for non-TSR games. 

This Old Dragon: Issue #146

 Been a bit since I have done one of these. Looking at my notes I started this in June and just getting around to finishing it. Ah. Well, I have been kinda busy with real life stuff. So lets go back in time, not to an ancient land or a galaxy far, far away, but to the end of the 1980s. June 1989 to be exact. Let's see I had just ended my second year at University. I had settled in on my majors and was getting straight As. I picked up the new AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook three month prior and had just grabbed the AD&D 2n Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. Likely I saw this issue on the stands.  "Rock On" by Michael Damian, cover of the Glam Rock hit by David Essex was number one on the airwaves. In the theaters we were in for a treat, our movie choices were Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Trek: The Final Frontier (who I saw with my best friend who I would later marry in just 6 years), Batman, and Ghostbusters II. And on our shelves along with the new AD&D 2nd Edition was Issue #146 of This Old Dragon.

My issue is missing the cover, but I do want to talk about it. The cover lets us know this is the 13th year of Dragon Magazine! Rather nice milestone. If Dragon had continued we would have celebrated its 48th year.  Our cover is by none other than Keith Parkinson himself.

Since this is the anniversary issue and it the late 80s early 90s we can expect a themed issue about dragons, and that is exactly what we get. 

This is that odd in-between time of Dragon were both AD&D 1st Ed and 2nd Ed are supported. Leading many of us at the time to just treat them as the same game despite some differences. 

Up first, big ad for the Science Fiction book club. I still have a lot of those books. 

This is followed by a big two-page spread ad for the SSI AD&D Computer games.  This is important later one. BTW you can still get these game cheap on Steam and Gog. 

Following that in the Editorial, Roger Moore asks if traditional Pencil & Paper RPGs are dead due to advancements in computer games. The editorial ends with the question "Will computer RPGs eventually replace 'paper' RPGs?" And then adds, "The future will tell. And DRAGON Magazine will be around to find out."  Well...the answer is a lot more complicated than "yes" or "no." The successes of D&DF 5e and Baldur's Gate 3 (note at the time of writing Baldur's Gate 1 was still 10 years away) seems to show that there is not just room for both, but both are welcomed now by a lot of the same people. Sadly Dragon was not around to address BG3 but future issues did cover a lot of video games.

Letters asks for some new features like tech items in Bazaar of the Bizarre and requests to send fan mail to artists. Forum wants to know if the glory days of D&D are now in the past. 

Sage Advice now has to differentiate between 1st and 2nd Edition books. Where discrepancies occur, 2nd Edition takes precedence. 

Wings of Doom begins our featured section on Dragons.

David E. Cates is up first with Dragons are Wizards' Best Friends, a guide to new small dragons to be used as familiars. These fall under the sub group of dragons known as drakes. We ware even treated to a Crystal Drake art by the late Jennell Jaquays. We get Crystal, Demon, Faerie, and Shadow Drakes. These are al 1st Edition stats.

The Dragon's Bestiary has many new dragons, also in 1st Ed versions. These are the Cobra Dragon, the Obsidian Dragon, Gray Dragon, Rainbow Dragon, Draken, and Minidragon.

Jean Rabe and Skip Williams are up with The New Ecology of Dragons. This is designed for the AD&D 2nd Edition game. 

All three articles are a must read for anyone that love dragons (like my son) and plays AD&D.

The Hatching Magazine by A.D. Young is a look back at the predecessor to Dragon, The Strategic Review. Now like many I knew about the Strategic Review and its place in TSR/D&D history, but I had never seen any copies. That would not be until 10 years later when Wizards of the Coast released the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM with scanned PDFs of the everything. 

It was a wonderful insight to an age right before the time I started playing and only knew a little about.

The Ever-After is our short story from eluki bes shahar. Yes that is how it is spelled and it the original name of Rosemary Edghill. I do love how many successful authors and artists got their start with Dragon and TSR.

The centerfold is giant Buck Rogers poster. No need to go over how that went for TSR.

TSR Previews tell us what is hot for the late Spring of 1989. Among the choices, lots of Forgotten Realms, AD&D 2nd Ed DMG and the "All New Dungeon! Family Game."

Marvel-Phile covers some "Sage Advice" like questions for the Marvel Super Heroes game.

Not to be out done, there is an add for the DC Heroes 2nd Edition game, focusing mostly on Batman. Batmania is in full force.

Gamma World is not forgotten, well, at least not yet with Dan Salas' Dangerous Terrain. It looks like it could work for any version of Gamma World.

The Lessers are back (Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk) with the Role of Computers.  Chuck Yeager's A.F.T. 2.0 is featured. I had a roommate that played all the flight simulator games on his DAK 386. That was the shit for the time. This article also shows off the differences between the IMB-PC compatibles and the Amiga. I always low-key liked the Amiga. The girl-friend I had at the time had one and I thought it was really great.

Ad for West End Game's Star Wars. Despite my love for Star Wars, I never played this one.

Arrows of the East gives us some new arrows for the Oriental Adventures book. David Kloba gives us a new selection of arrows including how to find them. 

Gamers Guide small ads are up. Many old favorites are here with more about computers and computer RPG help.

Kevin Murphy has a fun article on wishes in If You Wish Upon a Star... AD&D focused, but could be used with any FRPG. It is a pretty comprehensive article. 

Convention Calendar for June to September 1989 is next. There are some local to me ones that sadly no longer are running. 

Dragonsmirth has our comics including Yamara. One day I need to make good on my promise to read those all in order.

So. If you love dragons then this is a good issue to find. It is also typical of the issue for the next year or so until the Powers that Be focus completely on AD&D 2nd Ed; even to exclusion of the BECMI line.

This Old Dragon: Issue #166

 Dipping into the box of mildewy Dragons under my desk, I find this gem in February 1991. Ok, again, I did not pull this one out completely at random. And compared to some of the others this one is in rather great shape. Let's see. February of 1991. I was an undergrad, living in an apartment with three other guys. Graduation was still a year or so off. My computer at the time was my aging Color Computer 3 that, while I loved it, was showing me its limitations in an increasingly IBM-PC-compatible world.  The number song on the radio was "The First Time" by Surface. No I don't remember them at all. The number one movie was "Sleeping with the Enemy" staring Julia Roberts. And on tables and shelves everywhere was Issue #166 of This Old Dragon.

Again, this is a sci-fi-themed edition, so let's see what we have here.

Our cover this month is from E. M. Gooch. I admit I don't know them and my quick internet search pulled up nothing.

Letters covers the topics of the month from all over the world. An Israeli reader provides some names for creatures in Hebrew. A Canadian reader has Griffon questions. 

The Editorial by Dale A. Donovan covers a lot of good non-TSR games for various genres. 

In Time for Tomorrow is our Sci-Fi themed section. Up first is Michael LaBossiere with Wired and Ready a guide to running a cyberpunk-style RPG. The 90s were a great time for cyberpunk games. I had tried out several in the first half of the decade, with Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk and FASA's ShadowRun as my two favorites. Ithink Shadowrun edged it out for me since I was always a fan of magic. His 5 page article covers a lot of ground and was required reading back then. Today, well many of the things that seemed like fantasy then are all too real now. Large, above the law, corporations. Dark futures. cyber slang. All feels like history and current events instead of some future time.

Mike Speca has some BATTLETECH advice in Tricks of the Trade. Now I never played BATTLETECH though I do see the appeal. 

Up next is an article that to me at least feels like "what happens if we adapt Paranoia's biggest gag to GURPS Autoduel?" Edward Goldstein gives us A Clone of Your Own for GURPS Autoduel. It reads like one of the "Ecology of" articles; set in the world of the game and reporting what they know with game details interspersed.

Breaking up the sci-fi is TSR PREVIEWS for February and March 1991. Among the listings are The Complete Psionics Handbook, which I just dug up for my new Forgotten Realms campaign. Some Buck Rogers XXVc accessories. Ship of Horror for Ravenloft, which I think I picked up right away, and some more. 

Three pages of the Convention Calendar is next. Lots of international ones here too. The Egyptian Campaign '91 is listed for March 1-3. Despite being there, I am pretty sure I missed it. Lots of little cons back then, I don't find as many of these now.

The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk) are back with The Role of Computers. This time they cover Wing Commander, which they give 6 stars out of 5! That's quite a review. The requirements are also pretty high for 1991, s Roland sound board and VGA graphics. No indication on RAM but I am betting at least 8 or 16 megs, which was top notch back then.

The Game Wizards from Timothy B. Brown is up with a preview of the new Dungeons & Dragons set subtitled "An Easy-To-Learn Introduction to Role-Playing." Like all Game Wizards entries it is half sales pitch, half preview. 

Friend of the Other Side, Bruce Heard is up with another installment of The Voyage of the Princess Ark.

Superstar Tom Moldvay is next with a new game, Dino Wars! A very clever game of army men vs toy dinosaurs. Honestly, it looks fun. There is quite a lot of detail, and it looks like something everyone could play with, given how ubiquitous toy soldiers and dinosaurs are.

Our fiction section is Rest Stop by J.W. Donnelly.

Scott Waterhouse is up with Arcane Lore: More Pages from the Arch Mages. Not the subtle title change. This covers new spellbooks and spells for AD&D 2nd Edition.

Sage Advice answers our burning questions and errata. 

Jim Bambra reviews Torg and Rifts in Role-Playing Reviews. Is there any game that is more early 90s than Rifts? Almost every designer I know has developed something for it. 

Marlys Heezel "reviews" some new novels for the Novel Ideas column, which I have never seen before. Both books are from TSR Books, so it really feels more like an ad.  In fact a full page ad for them follow.

Forum covers some deeper topics from Dragons #155 and #156.

Robert Rinas gets in on the Top Gun craze and gives us The Navy Wants You! for the Top Secret/S.I. RPG. It covers naval officer training as a character creation option.

Dragonmirth has our comics including Yamara. One day I will track these all down and read them in order.  The Twilight Empire is next. The art is good and I am sure the story is too. HAve to read it from the start to be sure. 

Through the Looking Glass by Robert Bigelow has the latest on new miniatures. 

So not a great issue by any stretch, but there are some gems. This feels like a transition issue before Dragon becomes a TSR game only show.  I was hoping for more sci-fi material to be honest.

This Old Dragon: Issue #183

  That time again when I reach into the pile of Dragons under my desk and pull out one to read. This month, I am focusing on sci-fi, so in a bit of a cheat, I am pulling from the small selection of sci-fi-themed Dragons. Today's Dragon #183 comes to us from the summer of 1992. It's July; I just finished my undergrad degree and working on my Masters. My best friend from all over the world also graduated, but she is finishing up another bachelor's degree and will be moving to Chicago in a month or so. No. I am not ready for this. Spoiler: We decide in February of 1993 to start dating. Can't do it while we live in the same town I guess, have to wait till we are 300 miles apart. We are still married.  In the theatres, "A League of Their Own" is number 1. Mariah Carey is at #1 with "I'll Be There," and on the shelves and gaming tables everywhere is Issue #183 of This Old Dragon. 

Our cover this month is from Mike L. Scott and features Spelljammer "space whales" called Kindori. I noticed my oldest was prepping a new Spelljammer game, so I asked him if he knew about these guys.

So, at this point, I was not reading Dragon regularly. I knew of this issue, but nothing really about it. 

We were hit with some ads right away, which I enjoyed. One is for a Doctor Doom supplement for Marvel Super Heroes, and another is for Dungeons of Mystery. Dungeons of Mystery features the concept art and not the final art. The concept art has a solid "Mystara" feel to it that I rather like. Flipping the page more TSR ads for the new Dragonlance book and Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue.  I am not that familiar with this one outside of the name, I will have to track it down.

We get to the Contents and learn this month's special feature is Science and Fantasy. Great!

Letters cover a bunch of quick-shot answers from past issues in a rapid-fire fashion. I see the Witch from #114 is still stirring the pot, er, cauldron. 

Roger Moore's Editorial covers how to adapt some fantasy books to your AD&D game. There is a picture of four books, including The Princess Bride, but he only talks about two of them, "The Face in the Frost" and "The Last Unicorn."  He does mention he ran out of space and time for the others.

Bruce Nesmith is up first for our feature with Magic & Technology Meet At Last in his notes on converting AD&D 2nd Ed and Gamma World 4th Ed. Thankfully, it seems to be a bit easier than I expected since they are more closely related than I originally knew. Plus Gamma World essentially is using the d20 to hit AC mechanic we will later see in D&D 3rd Edition and the d20 rules. 

Advice to a High Lord is from Martin Wixted. It is interesting for a couple of reasons. First off it is copyrighted, so likely one of the articles that would cause so much drama when the Dragon CD-ROM came out, and it is about West End Games' TORG. So a rare non-TSR game. Though at this time they were still being featured, soon all other game support would drop.  I don't know much about TORG really. I saw people playing it when I would pop over to the Student Center when they had their RPG open games, but never played. I still see it a lot at Gen Con.

Speaking of which. Small ad for the combined Gen Con/Origins game show. 

People love pirates. Well...I admit I don't, but they are popular. "Avast, ye swaps, and heave to!" by Richard Baker III covers pirates and privateering in AD&D Spelljammer. While not a lot of mechanics, there is some good stuff here. It should work for AD&D 2nd Ed and the 5th Ed material my kid was reading over.

Ah...Now this looks fun. Unidentified Gaming Objects brings UFOs to your Fantasy RPG. Gregory W. Detwiler gives us great overview of what is going on in the skies a full year before the X-Files hit our TV screens. He provides a lot of what we might call "Conspiracy theories" today and gives you a way to work them into your games. A lot of these would be fantastic for *D&D. Though I am disappointed that in his otherwise great coverage on the Hollow Earth he doesn't mention Mystara as Hollow, published two years prior. His Bibliography is really good for pre-Internet publications. I would use these all in NIGHT SHIFT.

Game Science has a cool ad for the RANGE 1 electronic dice roller. After my CS 212 and STAT 501 courses, I learned about pseudorandom numbers. I never allowed these things in my games. Which was a moot point because I could never afford them back then! But still, I did like the idea.

Convention Calendar has your summer vacation travel plans ready. Oh, wait. I was in grad school then, I didn't get a summer vacation. In fact it was either 1992 or 1993 (can't remember) when the State of Illinois did not meet its budget and all workers, including Graduate TAs, were furloughed. I didn't get paid all summer long. That's why I could not afford fancy dice rollers. Anyway the format here has changed on the Calendar and it is easier to see the various states faster and easier.

FASA is up with a ShadowRun 2nd Edition ad. I loved ShadowRun, I loved the world building. I just wish I could have played it more. WAIT I can if I combine NIGHT SHIFT with Thirteen Parsecs! Note to Self, try this. 

Dragon Magazine 90s MVP, and friend of the Other Side, Bruce Heard is up with Part 30 of The Voyage of the Princess Ark. Second Note to Self: Track down all of these and review them in order. As usual there is a narrative piece and some game material too. 

Role Playing Reviews by Rick Swan covers the Leading Edge Games version of Aliens and FASA's MECHWARRIOR 2nd Edition. They get 2.5 and 3.5 stars respectively. Swan mentions he does not see the appeal of the Aliens franchise, so I wonder if that affects his review at all. BUT given my own personal experiences with Leading Edge Games, he might be right.

The Lesser Clan of Hartly, Patrica, and Kirk are back with more The Role of Computers. They look forward to the time when CD-ROMs lower the price of games not having to ship floppy disks! Yeah... They do review the first Civilization game which they rightfully give 5 stars. It is amazing what these old games used to be able to do with the limited hardware of the day. Granted, we didn't see it that way; I had my first Gateway 2000 computer and I thought I was living in the damn future.

Jean Rabe is up with an oddly placed (given the theme) The Vikings' Dragons, Part 2. This is a set of five linnorm dragons in AD&D Monstrous Compendium format ready to put into your binders. Love the idea, really, and the dragons are fun. Part 1 appeared in issue 182.

TSR Previews lets us know what is coming for July 1992. Most of these are featured as ads in this very magazine. 

Ardath Mayhar has our short fiction, Gryphon's Nest.

The MARVEL-PHILE from Steven E. Schend covers Cerise and Kylun from the Excalibur series. 

Forum covers some deeper discussions. I see some familiar names here like Alan Kellogg. 

Role of Books with John C. Bunnell has the new novels gamers might be interested in. Among those listed is new author, Laurell K. Hamilton and her Nightseer book. I bet she will be a big name later on! Also featured is the new one from Michael A. Stackpole (yes, that one).

Skip Williams has more Sage Advice. Anne Brown has shopping advice for your characters in The Game Wizards.

Dragonmirth has our back-pages comics. I recognize Yamara certainly. The Twilight Empire is features too. I never followed it. I should make an effort to try sometime. 

Gamers Guide has our small ads. Ads to cast your own metal minis, t-shirts with dragons, play-by-mail, and a new idea, computer-simulated galaxies. I can tell some of these were made with the Mac version of PageMaker and then printed out and sent to Dragon. Not a criticism, more fondness.

Ah, now something very interesting. Through the Looking Glass by Robert Bigalow covers minis but spends the first page discussing the banning of lead miniatures due to governmental regulations on lead. I remember this and felt like I was just getting to a point where I could afford them and then they go away! Well, I can't recall where that shook out, but plastic rules the tables now.

All in all, not a bad issue, just not as much science fiction as I wanted.

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This Old Dragon: Issue #134

 This weekend, Saturday, February 10, is the start of the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Dragon. Very nice how it lines up with the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. So I cheated a little and went digging for a Dragon Magazine that featured Dragons. Not too difficult really. So lets head to the Summer of 1988. I just finished my Freshman year of college. I spent my summer working and calling this girl I had met in the fall, piling up a HUGE bill on my Sprint card. No worries, in just seven more years I'd marry her. George Michael dominates the airwaves. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" hit the screens, and on the shelves and game tables everywhere was Issue #134 of This Old Dragon!

Our cover, "Sword of Dawn," is from Charles Vess. I have seen a lot of his work since this issue and I have always liked it. 

Letters let us know that this is the 12th Anniversary issue of Dragon Magazine, so it's a nice milestone to be sure. 

Forum gives us some ideas on modifying the Magic-user to make it less prone to dying early on. Others debate the merits of the Experience system.

We get to our main feature right away. Dragons!

The Dragon's Bestiary gives us seven new dragons from various authors including Dragon VIP and the father of the Realms, Ed Greenwood. They are all interesting to be honest, and I'd like to see new versions of them. Had there been a Monster Manual III, they would have been it. 

Ed Friedlander is up with Give Dragons A Fighting Chance, which aims to make dragons much scarier. Something that started with Dragonlance and continues to today. He discusses physical attacks, making better use of dragon spellcasters, and better tactics. He uses the example of Razisiz the Blue Dragon from the DMG p. 81. Both in his "regular" stats and his beefed-up version here. A few recommendations for previous articles that cover similar ground are also mentioned.

An advertisement for an AD&D computer game, Pool of Radiance, is next. Get it for the IBM-PC and Commodore 64/128.

Friend of the Other Side, Vince Garcia, is next with Serpents and Sorcery. This article is all about getting more out of the spell-casting powers dragons have and making good use of their spells in their local environs. Really good article that you can still use today. 

Lords & Legend was a sometimes feature with various personalities. This time it is Dragotha the Undead Dragon from module S2 White Plume Mountain. He would make an appearance again in the 3e days, but his 1st Edition AD&D stats and background are given to us here by William Simpson. 

Greg Sharp gives us a good one, The Ecology of the Red Dragon. I am surprised that there were not more Ecology Of articles about Dragons. They are some of the biggest creatures in the game, and yet they don't feature very often. 

This issue is already falling apart, so I can go ahead and do this without worry.

Skip Williams is dispensing wisdom again in Sage Advice. This time, covering a lot of character questions. 

Bazaar of the Bizarre is usually a favorite feature of mine. But this one not so much. It has a bunch of "less than serious" items, and honestly, it feels like an April feature that they could not fit in. I would have rather seen more dragon-related treasures. 

Another friend of the Other Side, Bruce Heard, is up with some errata, clarifications, and more for the Orc Wars game they had back in issue #132.

Jame Brunet has our short fiction piece, "Eyes of Redemption."

TSR Previews covers Summer 1988. Lots of Marvel Super Heroes, some Dragonlance, and Top Secret.  The Bullwinkle and Rocky Role-Playing Party Game is up for June. I didn't understand the fascination with Bullwinkle and Rocky then, and I still don't. Keep in mind that when this game was released, there had not been any new B&R content made for 20 years. I mean, I am not completely immune to the effects it had on pop culture, but it seems like an odd choice. Yes, I would later learn why this game was made, but back then, it made no sense to me. 

Arcane Lore from D.F. Fjellhaugen gives us some cleric spells for healing.

The official Origins Awards ballot for 1987 is next. What were your choices?

This year was an odd one where Gen Con and Origins were held together in 1988. 

Dennis McLaughlin has some sniper rifles for Top Secret in Sighting In. Likely this could all be converted to other games if needed.

Part of my The Game Wizards is cut out.  Looking at my Dragon CD-ROM, I can only guess the previous owner wanted the picture of the Godzillia-like monster.

Ah. How can you tell it is the 80s? The fascination with all things Japanese. Hell, I even read Shōgun that summer. The Role-Playing Reviews from Jim Bambra covers Bushido, the AD&D Oriental Adventures, and the RuneQuest Land of the Ninja.  "Oriental" is now considered to be an archaic term at best and pejorative at worst. I will not debate that here. In fact, what I am most interested in here now is how 1988 Dragon was talking about Gary Gygax. So how are they? Well, while the plainly visible cover says "Gary Gygax" right on it, his name is never mentioned in the review. Design is credited to David "Zeb" Cook, who, in all likelihood, did do the lion's share of the work on it. Again, not going to debate here and now, but maybe if I ever do review it myself.  The article largely focuses on how closely the various products are linked to real feudal Japan. Bambra mentions that by making Kara-Tur a fictional land using influences from Japan, China, and Korea you can side-step some of these issues.

Catching Some Rays by Daniel Salas deals with radiation damage in Gamma World. 

The Lessers (Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk) are back in The Role of Computers with Dream Zone, Strike-Fleet (Naval Simulator), and The Pawn (adventure) get the most coverage. 

David Edward Martin, another friend, is up with more powers for the Marvel Super Heroes game in The Ultimate Addenda's Addenda.

This means that outside of some reviews, every article here was about a TSR game. This is a trend that will continue and grow. 

Gamers' Guide covers some small ads. Always fun to look at these. A half-page section alone on Play By Mail games. One in particular is out of Ottawa, IL, a tiny little farm town a few miles south and west of Aurora. It was even smaller back then. My wife is from that area, I am sure I have driven by it.

Convention Calendar gives us the best conventions for the Summer and into the Fall of 1988. One was within easy driving distance to me back then, Capitol-Con IV at the Prairie Capital Convention Center on July 9. Wonder what I was doing then? Likely working at Pizza Hut.

Dragonmirth has the usual collection of comics. Among them was Yamara, whom I caught occasionally enough to find amusing but never often enough to know what was going on with it. There is Elmore's Snarf Quest, now up to episode #58, that's close to 5 years. 

I am sure this is not the first "All TSR, All the Time" issue, but I know that trend is coming. Eventually, all game magazines went this way. White Dwarf had made this switch as early as two years prior, so I guess I am not surprised. It makes sense from a financial point of view, I suppose I miss the days when a game magazine covered multiple games from a variety of publishers.  Today we have the internet for all that. 

So overall a fine issue with some gems; the dragon stuff is great, and I'd like to use it somewhere. 

Happy Year of the Dragon!