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.