The Dragon #5, March 1977

Another month, another Dragon:

• There's a very long article on witches in D&D - not as players, but as enemies.  It details different kinds of witches, the spells they use, and the magic items they possess.  It's fairly interesting and mostly well thought out, although the author does admit that he created them solely to be a challenge to the 11th level wizards in his game (if you have to create your own super-powerful monsters to challenge your players, you've probably done something wrong).
• This is the first issue where we start seeing significant content for Metamorphosis Alpha, the sci-fi roleplaying game invented by D&D personality Jim Ward.  I won't comment much on this material going forward since it's non-D&D, but I do find the premise of the game and what I can glean of the content to be interesting.
• This issue's Creature Feature (called Featured Creature here for some reason) introduces another classic, original D&D monster - the ankheg (here spelled anhkheg originally).  I've never encountered these in a table top session, but I do have fond memories of my party being torn apart by them in Baldur's Gate.
• The Out on a Limb segment (the letters column) is a little dull this month:
• There are a couple of letters supporting the inclusion of fiction in the magazine - obviously picked by Tim Kask to justify his editorial choices.  To be clear, I'm enjoying reading the fiction included in the magazine, I just think the magazine would have been better off with a strict focus on gaming.
• There's another article debating elves in Lord of the Rings.  Look, I'm as big of a Tolkien fan as anybody (as well as Star Wars, Star Trek, and other major fantasy and sci-fi franchises), but I never fail to be amused by fanboy rage over minutiae like this.  It's also humorous to know that fanboy rage is a phenomenon that predates the internet.
• Speaking of fiction, we get another Niall of the Far Travels story.  It's no Conan, but it's still enjoyable.  I had never thought of myself as interested in old-school sword and sorcery fiction, being more partial to high fantasy, but I have a growing appreciation for it.
• There's an article on research rules for wizards that's not particularly compelling.
• And if you still haven't gotten your fill of fanboy debates, there's a whole article debating that Gandalf was a 5th level wizard at best (as opposed to the ultra-high level wizard we would normally assume him to be).  This assertion is based on the analysis by the author that all magical effects performed by him in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings could be explained by spells 3rd level and below.  It just makes me chuckle.

We're almost out of the product desert - only two more issues to go!  Hang in there with me, as we'll get to explore the classic Holmes basic D&D rules. 

The Dragon #4, December 1976

I have little to say about this issue.  It is almost completely devoted to material for Empire of the Petal Throne.  If you're not familiar with it, EPT was one of the very first roleplaying games.  I want to say it was the second after D&D, being released in 1975 only a year after the original boxed set, but I can't find a source that can positively confirm that.  It was created by M.A.R. Barker who was inspired after seeing D&D to create his own game.  TSR purchased the distribution rights and it became one of their standard products early on, although it never really achieved widespread popularity like D&D.

The setup is interesting - it is a fantasy game, but yet takes place tens of thousands of years in the future.  The premise is that far in the future a planet is colonized by technologically advanced humans.  Then, for reasons not understood, the entire solar system the planet is in becomes trapped in its own pocket dimension, separated from the rest of the galaxy.  Cut off from civilization and nearly destroyed by cataclysm, over the next fifty thousand years society reverts to a primitive state, but artifacts from the previous age of technology can still be found and used, if not understood.  The shift to a pocket dimension also allows for contact with extra-planar beings, some of whom become the new gods of the world, and access to extra-planar powers allows magic to work.

It's an interesting setting, but it's not D&D material, which is what I'm really here for, so I don't have much to say about it.  I will comment that settings like this seemed to be a theme in the 70s - a technological age that has suffered catastrophe and devolved to a more primitive state.  Just in roleplaying alone you have EPT, Metamorphosis Alpha, and Gamma World.  I suppose with the Cold War, the end of Vietnam, trouble in the Middle East, and inflation it's not surprising that it was a difficult time whose zeitgeist produced pessimistic views of the future of humanity.

Fortunately The Dragon is still bimonthly at this point, so we only have a few more to go before getting back to actual products.  Join me next time for another issue.

The Dragon #3, October 1976

We continue our long stretch of Dragon issues:

• The editorial by Tim Kask is an excellent piece discussing the relationship between the fiction we read and the games we play.  Apparently he received a small but vociferous backlash against the amount of fiction included in the last issue.  His argument is that our ability to imagine is dependent on our background and what we have been exposed to.  The richer our exposure to concepts - regardless of whether we like them or dislike them - the richer our imagination will be, and thus he defends the inclusion of fiction in the magazine in order to provide fuel for the reader's imagination.  I certainly agree with his argument in general, but I believe it's still not the right choice editorially.  I believe people subscribed to The Dragon because they wanted a gaming magazine.  Do fantasy gamers need to constantly expand their horizons through fiction?  Of course, but that's up to them to do in the time and manner of their choosing.  There are/were already magazines devoted to fantasy and sci-fi literature.  The Dragon would have been better served with a tighter focus (which is eventually what happened anyway of course, as it became virtually exclusively a D&D magazine).
• There's an article on female characters that's simultaneously hilarious, bizarre, and more than a little sexist.  I don't recall the original boxed set saying anything about female characters, I'd have to check, but I think the assumption was just that if you want to play a female character, you just do, and they follow the exact same rules.  This article seems to assume that female characters should be fundamentally different from male characters.  First, they only get 1d8+1d6 for strength, which I don't have a problem with, but then they have a beauty score instead of charisma, which I do take issue with.  It provides new lists of level names for women, which makes sense, since the normal level names are somewhat masculine, but here's where it really gets cringeworthy.  The first four levels for thieves are named "Wench", "Hag", "Jade", and "Succubus".  No joke.  Female thieves get the ability to do tarot readings as a special ability.  It gets worse, as all female characters, if I understand the rules correctly, get certain female-only spells, like Charm Man and Seduction (but only if their beauty score is high enough!).  Remember ladies, your only real talent is your ability to seduce men!
• Another article addresses the issue of character backstory for I believe the first time.  Finally someone thinks to address the question, "Where do all these player characters come from?"  It also introduces non-class occupations that players can have as a result of their background - a primitive form of non-weapon proficiencies.  It's nice to see sensibilities for this sort of thing appearing, as you know how much I've remarked on the story-less, XP grinding-only nature of the game at this point.
• The very first Finieous Fingers comic appears in this issue.  Finieous would stick around for a few years in the early life of Dragon and was a notable first in comics dedicated to roleplaying.
• In the Out on a Limb letters section, there's an amusing exchange between a fan who wants to be able to photocopy material from D&D books and TSR staff who are adamant that doing so amounts to ripping them off.  I have a minor interest in intellectual property law and have eagerly watched the battles of the last twenty years between content creators and consumers due to the internet's influence.  It's interesting to know that it's old hat and nothing really ever changes.  There's also a humorous flame war between two letter writers over Tolkien's elves.  One of the writers had contributed an article in a previous issue separating out the various kinds of elves according to Tolkien's work and writing up stats for them.  The second author wrote in to say that the first had no idea what he was talking about, to which the first replied the same.  The Silmarillion was still a year away at this point, which would settle all such contention.
• The quest for sub-classes continues, with articles in this issue creating classes for healers, samurai, and berserkers (who are sort of barbarians who can change into a were-shape in the frenzy of battle).  Obviously these never quite caught on like the bard and illusionist (although the samurai would appear in Oriental Adventures), but it again shows the tension in the game over the philosophy of classes.  There's also a write-up for a jester class, but I'm not sure if it's meant to be taken seriously or is just a joke.
• A very confusing article gives rules for sage specialists.  The author seems to not understand the D&D rules, and I'm not sure why the editor included this one.  The supposed purpose of these sages is to copy spells into mages' and clerics' spellbooks, which ignores the fact that mages can already do this and clerics don't even have spellbooks.
• A final article gives expanded rules for dwarves and opens up the cleric and thief classes to them (a change that obviously would become lasting).  It's also notable that it is one of the first instances of a particular type of optional rule that would appear in material through 2nd edition - demihumans being able to exceed their normal racial limits if their attributes are high enough.

There was a lot of content in this issue, and I love it because I feel it shows the imagination of the player base really taking off, seeking to expand the game in ways unforeseen by its creators - with mixed success, as the discussions above show, but in the evolution of any game there are of course going to be good ideas as well as bad ideas that lead to dead ends.

The Dragon #2, August 1976

We begin a long stretch of Dragon issues, as it will be a year before the next official D&D product is released:

• The first D&D-related material of the magazine is an article regarding high level monk advancement.  The monk class introduced the concept of there being a limited number of characters of high level, and once a monk reaches a certain level, to advance he must defeat the next higher level monk in a challenge (a concept that was reused in the druid class and which lasted even into 2nd edition).  The article outlines a combat system for resolving these challenges.  One might naturally ask why it couldn't be resolved with the normal combat rules, which is what Supplement II: Blackmoor assumed in describing the process.  Of course it could, but I find this article fascinating because it shows a desire even at the very beginning of D&D for more tactical combat.  D&D at least through 2nd edition always suffered from "I attack with my sword...again" syndrome.  Combat was simple, but it was also too abstract, and fighters literally had nothing to do but declare which creature they were attacking and roll to hit.  The solution of course is a more detailed combat system, but its extremely easy to go too far and make combat a cumbersome affair where every encounter takes an hour to resolve.  The system presented here, while somewhat interesting for a primitive attempt, is just that.  It's a nice addition for special combats like monk advancement, but far too onerous for normal kobold swatting.  While I have mixed feelings about 4th edition, one thing it did excel at is providing a good tactical combat system that didn't get bogged down in its own rules.  As a final note, the author's homemade artwork demonstrating the various martial arts moves is simultaneously both adorable and awful:

• This issue is very fiction-heavy - I'm sure a deliberate effort on the part of the editor to create a more general fantasy magazine.  There's the second part of Gygax's "The Gnome Cache", a short story set in Greyhawk.  There's the conclusion of a short story started in the previous issue, which is a silly dungeon-crawl with 4th wall / anachronistic humor.  Finally there's a short story by Gardner Fox starring his new protagonist, Niall of the Far Travels, which is a Conan pastiche, although it's not a half-bad read for fans of sword & sorcery fiction.  I'm actually taking notes on the Gnome Cache stories, as I'm interesting to see if the various elements mentioned (mostly geographical locations) ended up actually making it into the formal Greyhawk campaign setting.
• There's a the conclusion of a three part series titled, "Hints for D&D Judges".  I don't believe I've commented on this one before, as the previous two installments weren't particularly noteworthy.  This one though caught my attention though because it emphasizes the comments I've been making about the tone of D&D at this point in its history.  It contains suggestions for dungeon elements.  Among its gems:
• A chest which is intelligent and fights the party as a 2nd to 9th level magic user.
• A suggestion that after the party defeats a red dragon, they discover that his "gold" is actually chocolate-centered candy.
• Gems that are worth 500 gold pieces, but which can be commanded to turn into a random monster - anything from a kobold to a dragon.

This is what I'm talking about when I discuss the non-serious tone of early gaming.  There's no concern with any kind of verisimilitude when creating dungeons.  An intelligent chest that can cast spells?  Why not?  I know some people react with the attitude of, "In a world with magic, being concerned with realism is pointless," but I contend that suspension of disbelief is not an infinite resource available to the participant.

• This issue's Creature Features introduces the remorhaz, one of the more interesting original creatures for D&D.
• An article introduces an alchemist class for the game.  While the bard and illusionist classes started in The Strategic Review / The Dragon and eventually made their way into the core game, the alchemist is one of those classes that never quite did.  However, the concept has always appealed to a certain portion of the player base, and thus write-ups of the class will continue to appear in later editions of the game in magazines and non-core sourcebooks.  The core issue is ultimately the philosophy behind defining a "class".  TSR made it clear up through 2nd edition that their philosophy was that classes were meant to be very general, and that you didn't need a plethora of specific classes.  Alchemists and witches - two of the most commonly requested "additional" classes - to them were just particular kinds of wizards and didn't need their own class (there's a specific discussion on this in one of the 2nd edition products, but I can't recall which one).  Personally I'm not a fan of the class concept at all, and prefer skill-based rule sets where the philosophy is "you are what you do".
• A final article - by the same author as the previous one - gives us some weapon rules that are a primitive version of weapon specialization and two-weapon fighting.

Join me next time as we continue to look at The Dragon's formative issues.

Supplement V: Swords and Spells

"Supplement V" appears nowhere in the actual product, but it is commonly known to all fans of OD&D by that description.  This product is an attempt to close the circle back with D&D's origins in Chainmail by providing an updated set of rules for fantastic miniature battles.  The rules for D&D combat are referenced as being the standard for 1:1 figure fights, and the full range of spells from D&D is available to wizard and cleric figures, but other than that this product has little to do with D&D.  As such I don't have much commentary on it.

TSR obviously still felt that wargaming and roleplaying went hand in hand at this point.  It's understandable - if the purpose of roleplaying is to play characters like those found in fantasy novels, it would make sense that players would want to recreate not just the individual fighting they do, but also the large scale battles these kinds of characters often participate in, such as the Battle of the Five Armies or the Battle of Helm's Deep.  However, we stand at the cusp of history here.  With AD&D a year or two away at this point the hobbies are about to diverge forever (although TSR would continue to try to tie the two together with the Battlesystem rules).

We have quite a few Dragon issues to go through now, as we're a year away from the next D&D product - the classic Holmes Basic Set, which was intended to be an introduction / bridge to AD&D, yet ironically ended up splitting the game into Basic D&D and AD&D.  It's an interesting milestone in the history of the game, and I hope you'll stick around to see it.

Supplement IV: Gods, Demigods, & Heroes

This supplement was the forerunner of the Deities and Demigods / Legends and Lore of later editions.  It's clear a lot of research went into this supplement, extensively covering the mythical characters from Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Finnish, Hyborean (Conan), Melnibonean (Elric), Mayan/Aztec/Incan, and Chinese pantheons, as well as notable "normal" monsters and magic items.  But honestly I can't say what the point of all that research was, because this has to be a candidate for one of the most pointless supplements in D&D history across all editions.

What this could have been was an overview of the various classic mythologies - explaining the personalities of the gods, their relationships with each other, the domains they had authority over, and how all of that might impact a campaign world: how clerics of different gods might differ from one another, how a particular pantheon of religion affects a society, and so forth.  Sadly, this kind of sensibility is still many years away at this point, and what we get instead is reflective of the infant (and perhaps infantile) state of the game.

What the supplement is is nothing more than a monster manual for gods.  After a very brief foreword where Tim Kask ironically wags his finger at Monty Haul DMs and an introduction consisting of a single table outlining divine psionic abilities, we dive right into a tediously long list of gods where each god is reduced to six stats (AC, move, hit points, magic ability, fighting ability, and psionic ability) plus a very short paragraph that discusses any special abilities they have.  That's it.  That's the entire book.

What was the point?  TSR would later clarify they didn't intend gods to be just bigger monsters that players fought, but if that's so, then what is the purpose of this format?  In the foreword Kask points out the absurdity of a 40th level fighter when Odin himself "only" has 300 hit points, and that's a good point.  So is the point of this supplement just to show how much more powerful than players the gods are supposed to be?  You don't need a supplement for that.  You don't need rules at all when it comes to dealing with gods.  There's no "roll for initiative" when it comes to facing a god.  The rule is: he's a god, you're not, he wins, end of story.  If you give gods stats like this, it can only be for the purpose of having players actually fight them, but to do so you would have to be the 40th level fighter the foreword disdains.

After Eldritch Wizardry introduced so many epic game elements (even if in a primitive, crude form), it's sad that the followup hit such a low point.  Join me next time as we cover the very last supplement and close out the OD&D era.

The Dragon #1, June 1976

We enter a new era with Dragon #1 (although technically the name is The Dragon at this point, and will be until the 80s).  TSR's goal at the beginning was to have the magazine be more than a house-organ for its products, so we'll have to put up with a lot of non-D&D material for a while until we get to the point in history where it goes back to basically just being a D&D magazine again.

• The first D&D-related article is a rule on how to use character attributes to determine a player's success at any non-combat actions they want to attempt.  It's a very primitive attempt to address the need for skill checks in the game - something still far in the future at this point.  If you read the last post, you know I complained a lot about how ridiculously over-complex so many of the rules are at this point, and this article is no exception.  Here is the honest-to-God way this author thinks you should handle ability checks:  First, roll a d100 and consult a table.  The result of the d100 on the table indicates what type of die you should roll next (from a d4 to a d12).  You then roll this die and multiply the result by the appropriate attribute score.  This final number is then the percentage chance for the character to succeed at what they're attempting, which they now get to roll for.  I just can't even fathom how people of this era thought rules like this were a good idea.
• Jim Ward, a notable early D&D personality, has an article on mixing technology and magic in D&D.  It's a standard sufficiently-advanced-technology kind of argument, and it's not a surprising contribution from Ward, considering he went on to design both Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, two classic sci-fi roleplaying games.  What surprises me is how willing the people playing the game in these early days were to mix genres so freely.  Despite D&D being heavily influenced by such serious works as The Lord of the Rings and Conan stories, there's a lightheartedness with which the game is treated.  From other articles and short stories in previous issues that I haven't specifically mentioned it's clear that early players didn't mind 4th wall humor, anachronisms, and out of genre material in their games.  It's just very puzzling to me, and it goes along with my previous observations of the lack of story in roleplaying at this point.  Once you invent the idea of fantasy roleplaying, I would think the immediate draw and next logical step would be the idea of playing the protagonists in a fantasy story.  After all, it's one thing to read about the exploits of Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas, but what if you could actually be them in a game, making decisions that affect the climax of a story?  But for some reason this is not the direction the early game takes, and it continues to mystify me.
• There's an article on languages in D&D that isn't particularly interesting or useful.
• The Creature Features column continues on in The Dragon, and it now gives us the bulette.  I know it's a classic D&D monster, but I've always felt the bulette was rather silly, and I've never particularly been a fan.
• There's the first in a series of short stories by "Garrison Ernst" (a pseudonym of Gary Gygax) that introduces Oerth (the name of the planet in the Greyhawk setting).  Gary describes Oerth as sort of an alternate earth, with the history of the planet diverging from ours significantly about 2,500 years ago.  It's an interesting tidbit to fans of the Greyhawk setting to see the ancient origins of elements of the setting.

The Dragon is still only bi-monthly at this point, so next time we dive back into another OD&D supplement: Supplement IV: Gods, Demigods, and Heroes.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry

Finally we get back to an actual product.  I enjoy the magazine issues, but it's the products I'm really after in this project of mine.  This won't be an issue once we get a few more years into it, when TSR started cranking out multiple products per month.  But for now we still live in the original D&D era when supplements were few and far between.

Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry was certainly a landmark, and for many different reasons.  Let's just jump straight to the thing that stands out the most about this product - the cover art:

Well alright then.  This was the very first product with color cover art, and I just find it interesting this is the direction they decided to go.  A naked woman tied down to a sacrificial altar?  I mean, it definitely matches the feel of the title if nothing else (although it is a little ironic that there's not any actual wizard-specific material in this supplement).  It's very clear that this was a different era.  All I can say is that I'm sure they were glad that this product was out of print by the time the satanic panic of the 80s rolled around.  But enough about that, let's look at the content:

• The druid class, originally an enemy in Supplement I, now makes its appearance as a character class, along with many classic druid spells.  What strikes me so much about the writing of these early rules is just how loose they are and how much they leave up to the DM.  For instance, it mentions how mistletoe is important to druidic spells, and how the effectiveness of a spell is modified by how properly the mistletoe was gathered, but that's it - no actual rules for adjustments are given.  It's totally up to the DM to make them up.  This is an interesting rules philosophy, and I'm not sure if it really represented a belief that this kind of minutiae was up to the DM to decide, or if it was honestly just to save on space (and thus printing costs).  It certainly is the polar opposite of what we would get in 1st edition AD&D, which if anything had too many rules.
• This supplement notably introduces psionics to the game.  I personally love the idea of psionics in general, and I really loved the 2nd edition psionicist class.  I still think its rules are an excellent example of a non-Vancian magic system.  But I knew nothing previously about psionics prior to 2nd edition, other than bits of legend and lore passed on by friends.  Psionic powers here are something that any character class can have, but at the expense of their normal class features.  Once again, I'm shocked at just how many powers I'm familiar with from the 2nd edition rules go straight back to the very beginning here.  I'm also shocked at how absurdly over-complicated the rules for psionics are.  Now I'll admit that as I read these products I'm not paying as much attention to the rules as I would if I were trying to actually learn and master the system.  Still, after reading the rules on psionics I couldn't even begin to give you an overview of how the system works.
• As if to underscore my previous point, there is a section on a primitive initiative system for combat that is again over-complicated and doesn't make much sense.  This is something I've been noticing ever since Chainmail.  The concept of streamlined, easy to remember rules has yet to make its way into roleplaying.  To make matters worse, it's not just the rules themselves, but the writing as well.  Concepts are described in the most roundabout fashion possible.  It just shows how very, very far the roleplaying industry has come in forty years.
• Most notably, this supplement introduces demons to the game.  Yes, "demons" with a "d"!  As a child of 2nd edition, I was familiar only with baatezu and tanar'ri, 2nd edition's renamed devils and demons respectively.  Seeing the effects of the 80s satanic panic on the game as it happens is something I'm eagerly anticipating down the line.  And speaking of demons, the majority of the supplement's art is devoted to them:

Bless their heart, they're trying.

After the cover art, I find the fig-leaf whip placement rather amusing.  Naked woman on a sacrificial altar?  Fine.  Demon wang?  Too far.

What about one of the most iconic demon princes of all time?

Well, it could be worse, I suppose.  It's just a long way from the pants-wetting depiction we get on the cover of the 4th edition Monster Manual:

Progress, huzzah!

• Mind flayers, previously the subject of the very first Creature Feature in The Strategic Review #1, now get a more fleshed out entry among the other added monsters, which also include the classic psionic monsters of the game like the brain mole and thought eater.
• Many of the most classic D&D artifacts are introduced here for the first time: The Mace of St Cuthbert, the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, the Rod of Seven Parts, the Machine of Lum the Mad, Heward's Mystical Organ, and several others, including the classic Vecna artifacts: the Hand, the Eye, and the Sword of Kas.  And although that may sound epic, the whole section is greatly disappointing.  The artifacts have very little - if any - lore attached to them.  The story of the Wind Dukes of Aaqa and the battle with the Queen of Chaos has yet to be invented for the Rod of Seven Parts, for example.  Each item is just a name, a very brief description, and then a list of how many powers of each kind it has on the traditional tables for artifact power and curses.  It doesn't even list suggested powers for each item!

Between druids, demons, psionics, and artifacts, this was certainly a landmark product in D&D history, and arguably the high point of the original D&D supplements.  Next time we return to the magazines for another landmark: Dragon #1.