The Strategic Review, December 1975

The magazine went to a bi-monthly publishing schedule with this issue, no doubt as TSR continued to pick up steam as a company and had more news and content to put out.  It also saw yet another increase in size - from 12 to 16 pages.  What do we get in all that space?

• There's an interesting article where the various famous personalities of TSR (Gary Gygax, Brian Blume, Timothy Kask, etc.) give their own bios.  As I said early in this blog, my focus is on the history of D&D rather than the history of TSR.  Nevertheless, I do find this info interesting - to know a little more about the original minds behind the game.
• There's an article describing a miniatures game where the referee secretly pitted a German unit from Tractics against a unit of D&D monsters without either side's foreknowledge - each side thought they were going to play a standard WWII or fantasy miniatures battle respectively.  It's an interesting read and reflects on the philosophy of D&D (even though this was a miniatures game) at this point.  There's definitely a lighthearted sense about the game, and DMs are not afraid to throw out-of-genre material into their campaigns.  All in all, the game doesn't take itself too seriously.  I see this as an outgrowth of the lack of story-based roleplaying that I've been discussing - if there's no real story to worry about, then there's no need to worry about verisimilitude and consistency.
• There's an article (an editorial, really) that pretty much involves TSR whining about rival company Avalon Hill.  AH had recently started the Origins wargaming convention, and apparently in some of their marketing had referred to it as the "premier" wargaming convention, and the only "national" convention.  The article goes to great lengths to explain that GenCon (having completed its eighth year) is in fact THE national wargaming convention.  It reminds me of the article Gygax wrote an issue or two ago taking some game reviewer to task over his negative review of D&D.  Apparently the TSR folks had a chip on their shoulder when it came to their reputation.
• Besides some new creatures and new magic items there wasn't a lot of D&D content in this issue, so I'll stop here and move on to the next.  However, I haven't been giving much artwork lately, so I'll leave you with this jewel: