The Strategic Review, Spring 1975

Not long after the creation of Dungeons and Dragons TSR decided to launch their own magazine: The Strategic Review.  It initially was intended to cover not just D&D, but also wargaming and related games.  However, TSR had yet to realize that the future was roleplaying games.  The Strategic Review lasted only seven issues before being spun off into two separate magazines: Dragon magazine for roleplaying (originally The Dragon) and Little Wars for wargaming.  Little Wars lasted only a short time before being cancelled, and technically wargaming content was then rolled back into The Dragon, but the magazine's future as a roleplaying magazine (with the lion's share of focus on D&D) was largely already set.

There's not much to this very first issue, as it is only six pages long.  Some highlights:

• News from TSR about their recent acquisition of the games Chainmail, Don't Give Up the Ship, and Tractics from Guidon Games.
• A "Creature Features" column giving us the mind flayer for the very first time ("illithid" does not appear here and must be a later addition).
• An article by Gary Gygax explaining the effectiveness of the spear in medieval combat.
• A very large feature (literally half the magazine) on how to create random dungeons so you can play D&D by yourself.  I find this infinitely amusing, as it shows how far the hobby has come in 40 years.  I'm just trying to image a modern roleplayer sitting down to roll up a random dungeon map for a solo hack-and-slash dungeon crawl.  I can't think of anything more tedious and boring, but as I've discussed in the last couple of posts, this was the state of roleplaying at its inception.  At let me be clear that I'm not against hack-and-slash games either.  I enjoy a good mindless dungeon crawl from time to time just like most other people (witness how many hours I lost to the original Diablo).  It's just I can't image playing D&D like this when I know what the game can be.
• Finally, a poll of readers asking what kind of content they would like to see in the magazine going forward

I know the decision to add magazines to my stated goal of reading every published D&D product will add a tremendous amount of reading.  However, in some ways it's the content that I'm most excited about, because the magazines - between official TSR articles and letters from readers - most clearly record the evolving nature of roleplaying games.  Future issues will contain articles discussing the reasoning behind certain rules, editorial debates on the philosophy of the rules, and other enlightening fragments of RPG history.  I'll hope you'll continue to join me, as next time we read issue number two.