The Dragon #15, June 1978

• There's an article on dragon magic that's well thought out and details some new spells just for dragons.  The author wisely concludes that dragons wouldn't bother with memorizing offensive spells like Fireball - they would trust to their breath weapon and powerful attacks for offense - so instead they would focus on utility spells.  It doesn't seem that much of this content survived, but it is a good example of a high-quality fan submission (still somewhat a rarity at this point, in my opinion).
• As if to highlight that last point, the article is followed by a brief article containing random tables for pits.  Like pits a character can fall into.  You know, because it's oh-so-freaking-hard to come up with what might be at the bottom of a pit.  I'm really, really starting to get tired of this "everything needs a table" mentality.  It's a PIT.  It can be empty, it might have spikes at the bottom, or it might have a creature - JUST PICK ONE.  YOU DON'T NEED TABLES FOR THIS CRAP UNLESS THE PART OF YOUR BRAIN RESPONSIBLE FOR IMAGINATION HAS BEEN LOBOTOMIZED.
• What follows the article on random tables for pits?  ANOTHER FREAKING ARTICLE OF RANDOM TABLES.  Sorry, I'll calm down now.  This one is actually somewhat useful, as it details random events for towns and cities to spice things up when players visit and perhaps provide hooks for action.  I still say such things should be driven by the DM's story, or at least his whim and imagination, but to each their own.
• Jim Ward is back with another amusing "The Adventures of Monty Haul", this time describing a miniatures battle between German WWII troops and D&D monsters.
• Jim has another article on wandering monsters for dungeons.  It's meh.
• A random fan does a follow-up to Jim Ward's D&D tips article a couple of issues back.  He describes how he plays a character who's just a "normal" guy (i.e., no class as such - poor fighting ability, no magic or thief skills, etc.) who gets by with tricks and gimmicks, some of which are quite clever.  It's a terrific reminder that a character's success has more to do with the cleverness of the player behind him than it does with stats and powers.
• There's a really bizarre fiction piece that I think was supposed to be funny describing the origin of neutrality in the conflict between law and chaos.  Obviously it didn't accomplish it's mission.
• The Sorcerer's Scroll is from Gary again, this time discussing problems arising from the differences in scale of indoors vs outdoors in D&D, and how this affects the area of effect for spells, or something.  Being a child of an era when measuring actual inches on a tabletop for roleplaying games had become an artifact of history, I just honestly couldn't be bothered to understand the point at hand.
• One more article of random tables!  This one is for weather, and again I'm a little more sympathetic to this one.  I still believe that weather should just be set by the DM to match the tone (or perhaps help set the tone) of the current story events, but I understand people who want weather to be a random variable that can help or hinder the characters depending on circumstances.
• There's an excellent article on strategy for the Stellar Conquest game, such that I can tell it's an excellent article even having never played Stellar Conquest or even know exactly how it works.  A little research reveals that it was an early 4X-type game in board game form.  I'm probably a little biased as I do love a good 4X game.
• The rest of the issue is taken up by the first part of a Harold Shea short story.  I've vaguely heard of the Incomplete Enchanter series before, but knew nothing about it.  The vernacular the various characters talk in is a little over the top, but it's entertaining enough otherwise.  I'm not sure the rest of the stories will make my "to read someday" list though.

Next time we examine a monumental point in D&D's history - the very first Player's Handbook.  I'll see you then.

The Dragon #14, May 1978

The Dragon marches on:

• There is an article reviewing the Nomad Gods board game by Chaosium.  It is the sequel to the very first Glorantha game, White Bear and Red Moon.  I have had no exposure to RuneQuest or the world of Glorantha, but every little bit I encounter makes me want to dive into it someday.
• There's also a review of Cosmic Encounter, my favorite board game of all time.  To be fair, I never got to play the original Eon game reviewed here, but rather the more common Mayfair version that came out later.  Still, if you've never played a game of Cosmic Encounter you haven't lived yet.  Several years ago I spent nearly $200 to get a copy of the long out-of-print Mayfair version, along with the More Cosmic Encounter expansion.  One of the greatest board games ever, hands down.
• The Sorcerer's Scroll this month is from Gary Gygax himself, discussing the place of the recently-released Holmes Basic Set and the direction of the game.  He states that the Holmes set is specifically targeted at new players to the game, and that while it is designed to lead them on to AD&D, it can also lead them on to OD&D (the original boxed set) just as well, since the product was in fact a rewrite and simplification of those rules.  "Basic D&D" clearly does not yet exist as a separate concept in the mind of TSR, and would only grow out of the fact that the original boxed set continued to sell well, indicating a separate market for it.  No doubt there is also some hedging of bets here as well, out of concern that AD&D might not be received well.
• Jim Ward starts a new series lampooning the TSR staff called "The Adventures of Monty Haul".  It basically describes a gaming session with greatly exaggerated parodies of the TSR personalities.  Good for a chuckle.
• There's an article on lycanthropy that proposes a system for player characters to carry on as infected were-beasts.  Honestly I've never been much of a fan of D&D's lycanthropy.  I have strong opinions on all aspects of RPGs, but especially those relating to horror genre creatures.  So I don't find this system particularly compelling, even if the author does try to balance the power of lycanthropes with some disadvantages.

Several other non-D&D articles round out this issue.  The Dragon has become a monthly publication with this issue, so we'll visit June's issue, then it will be time for the Player's Handbook.

The Dragon #13, April 1978

Our march of Dragon issues continues:

• There's an article on how to calculate how much a giant weights.  No, really, it provides a formula and everything, assumes giants are proportioned similarly to humans, and even provides a table for calculating the weight of golems and other giant, non-flesh creatures assuming they are still humanoid in proportion.
• After dropping a stinker in last month's Sorcerer's Scroll, Rob Kuntz comes back this month in a bit of editorializing, explaining to people that D&D is not The Lord of the Rings: The Game, for people who complain that elves, dwarves, hobbits, etc. do not match up exactly with how they are described in the books.  In doing this project I have discovered that, while it's true that D&D was influenced by other fantasy works besides LOTR such as Conan the Barbarian, there's no mistaking that LOTR was far and away the biggest contributor, so I have mixed feelings about TSR trying to distance themselves from it.  I'm sure some of this is motivated by the legal trouble TSR got into with Tolkien's estate early on, considering they lifted a little too much for use in the game.
• There's an article on randomly generating demons - again an attempt to thwart players who have memorized all the monster entries.  It feels like it's been a while since we've had one of these "guidelines for randomly generating ___" articles.  I'll be interested to see when or if they peter out in the life of the game.  The tables are decently done, but what really strikes me about this article is the art:

I can't say why exactly, but I find this image particularly compelling.  I feel it has an artistic maturity to it that was extremely rare in these early days of D&D.  It vaguely reminds me of DiTerlizzi's Planescape art.

• We have yet another Supplement IV appendix, this time Japanese mythology.  I think I've made my feelings on these things clear.
• There's another Niall of the Far Travels story by Gardner Fox.  I'm really coming to like these stories and did a little bit of research on them.  It seems Fox was rather known for creating Conan knockoffs, having created a couple of others as well.  He only ever wrote ten short stories for Niall, all but one of which appeared in The Dragon, so I'm looking forward to more of them in the future.  It seems that Niall's world, instead of being a legendary past, is instead some kind of post-apocalyptic future, set at least a hundred thousand years in the future where technology is gone and magic exists again.  The moon has been destroyed and is now a ring of debris around the earth.
• There's a truly interesting article by Jim Ward on D&D playing tips.  Ward modestly titles it "Notes from a Semi-Successful D&D Player", but those who know know he was one of the best of the original players.  Some of his tips:
• Carry a small wand with Continual Light cast on it.  It's easy to make, can't go out like a torch, and can be thrown into dark rooms.  Even better, Continual Light arrows against creatures used to darkness.
• Transfer all those potions you find in breakable glass containers to steel bottles instead.
• Always carry a five foot steel rod - the uses are endless.
• Using Polymorph Other to turn a creature into a goldfish ensures a quick death for it.  On the other hand, you can polymorph a large, dangerous creature into a tiny one like a snail, then capture and keep it.  A proper placement of the snail and a Dispel Magic then gets you a creature to fight a future battle for you.

A few other articles of uninteresting non-D&D material round out this issue, so we'll wrap it up for now.  Two more issues, and then we get to the Player's Handbook!

The Dragon #12, February 1978

We have a few more issues of The Dragon to get through before our next product - the 1st edition Player's Handbook.  After that the pace of products begins picking up a bit more and we won't have to wade through quite so many magazine issues in between.

• An article on illusionists takes back up the class that originally debuted in The Strategic Review.  It gives a few updated rules and a few new spells, but I don't believe the content here really stuck going into the Player's Handbook - probably because it was already mostly complete at this point, being published only four months from now.
• We get a long list of the deities of Zoroastrianism Supplement IV-style.  I've already talked about what a waste that product was, so any information extending it is similarly so.
• Jim Ward has an article talking about how the initiative system introduced in Eldritch Wizardry was a great boon to wizards facing warriors, but that system was so ridiculously over-complicated I can't be bothered to care much.
• There's an article on the history of the druids, explaining the differences between our fantasy conception of them versus what little we know to be historically true.  It's interesting, but only really useful I suppose if you want to create your own historically accurate druid class.
• What could be more useless than a Supplement IV appendix for Zoroastrianism?  How about one for the freaking Lovecraft mythos?  Rob Kuntz wastes the second ever Sorcerer's Scroll on this.  That's right, Great Cthulhu himself gets the stat treatment!  Are you kidding me?  If there were ever one fictional pantheon of gods that should not be given stats of any kind, ever, it's this one.  The very first entry is for Azathoth.  Azathoth.  You can't fight Azathoth.  YOU CAN'T.  Even though the entry describes him as being the size of a star, he still has only 300 hit points (which seems to be the unofficial maximum possible hit points for any god).  Oh, and if you do kill him, the universe ends.  Yeah.
• The final entry of note in this issue is an excerpt from Andre Norton's upcoming novel Quag Keep.  This was the very first D&D-based novel and is set in Greyhawk, but apparently it did survive the test of time well, as I had never heard of it before getting into this project.  Still, I will be reading it as part of this blog when it comes up later in 1978.

That's all for now.  Join me next time for another Dragon issue.

AD&D Monster Manual (1st Edition)

Well here we are finally, the 1st edition Monster Manual and the first ever official AD&D product.  This one was well known for it's cover art, probably considering it was the first ever hardcover book.  Speaking of the artwork, we haven't really discussed the level of D&D art in a while.  It's...getting better, I guess?  It's still nothing to write home about, but it's starting to show some signs of maturity.

The format is instantly recognizable to consumers of later versions and set the standard template of a stat block plus a picture, then a few paragraphs describing the creature in more detail.  The tone here is still very much "here is a collection of numbers to fight".  Most of the text is taken up with the creature's combat abilities, with perhaps a brief visual description and maybe a sentence or two describing the creature's ecology and how it fits into a larger world.

Having said that, let's dive into some of the more interesting entries:

• Demons are back, and instead of just being "type X" demons, they now have the familiar names that would stick through later editions.  In addition we get some new demon princes: Juiblex and Yeenoghu.  Note that while demons are noted as coming from the Abyss, the concept of the demon princes each ruling over a layer of the Abyss does not exist yet.
• Not to be outdone, devils make their first appearance in D&D material.  Several arch-devils appear here too, namely Asmodeus (9th layer), Baalzebul (6th and 7th layer), Dispater (2nd layer), and Geryon (5th layer).
• In the text for the demons and devils we get the first glimpses of D&D theology.  In the entry for manes we have the note, "Those dead which go to the 666 layers of the demonic abyss become manes....Certain manes will be used to form shadows or ghasts (qqv), depending on the greatness of their evil in material life."  Similarly, the entry for lemures states, "The lemures are the form which the dead whom inhabit the Nine Hells are put in...After being in hell for a certain time lemures will be chosen to form wraiths and spectres."  There is also an entry for larva, noting that they are the souls of the selfishly (neutral) evil, and that hags trade them to both demons and devils to be turned into quasits and imps.  The entry for quasits mentions that they can be turned into type I or type II demons for successful service, so we have the beginnings of the concept that demons and devils are gradually promoted to higher and higher forms starting from the souls of the dead, although it is not quite explicitly stated.
• Gary must really have loved him some dinosaurs, because the list of them included here is...thorough.  In addition, there are a number of other prehistoric creatures such as mastodons and saber-tooth tigers.  It must have been an interest of his.
• The section on dragons re-introduces the chromatic and metallic dragons, both of which have already appeared in earlier material.  I've noted this in a previous blog post on the original boxed set, but rules for subduing dragons reappear here, and again, it's rather ludicrously easy.  But what makes it even better are the statements afterwards about what you can do with subdued dragons.  First, take this gem: "Larger towns and cities will usually have a market for dragons."  I'm just not even going to comment on the concept of a city having an active, ongoing trade in subdued dragons.  But the best?  "Subdued dragons can be ridden."  Hell yeah!
• A platinum dragon and chromatic dragon were briefly mentioned in Supplement I, but here they get full entries as the Bahamut and Tiamat we know and love.  Tiamat is listed as ruling the first layer of hell, while Bahamut dwells in a palace behind the east wind.
• I'm both amused and chagrined by creatures introduced just for the sake of making an adventuring party's life harder.  It's a symptom of the early sensibilities of the game where the DM's purpose was basically just to try to kill the player characters.  The Ear Seeker is a perfect example of that.  The intention is that every time a character puts their ear up to a wooden door to listen for noise, they might get infected by ear seekers, which naturally leads to death unless cured.  I tag these kinds of creatures as "adventurers' banes".  There are several more here, some of which we have seen before like the lurker above, and some which are new like the infamous mimic.
• Drow make their very first appearance here.  It's just a very brief blurb under the elf entry, however.  It will not be until module G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King that they really appear in earnest.
• The beholder appears again here of course, but we also get our very first beholder-kin: the Eye of the Deep.
• I discovered that it was this product that introduced X-were creatures, which I've never been fond of.  There is a lengthy section on lycanthropes, or course, all of which are "were-X" (werewolf, wererat, etc.).  But it also has an entry for the jackalwere, and briefly mentions the wolfwere.  Whereas a werewolf is a man who can transform into a wolf, a wolfwere is a wolf that can transform into a man, because why not?  Later products (and especially Ravenloft) would introduce a wider range of X-were creatures, but I've always felt they were rather ridiculous.
• As a final note, I find it amusing that the text blurb on the back cover for the quasit doesn't actually match the text in the creature's entry inside.

That's all for this product.  It's been fun seeing the very first monster book in its original form.  Some of D&D's most iconic elements are the monsters it introduced or at least codified that still heavily influence fantasy RPG concepts even today, and this is exactly why I set out on this project in the first place.  Join me again next time as we go back to the Dragon.

The Dragon #11, December 1977

Well, it's finally time to get back to the business of this blog, and that means getting back to Dragon issues.  Let's take a look at what's in this month's:

• Gary Gygax has a long article defending TSR's copyright policies in not allowing other companies to republish D&D material.  I don't find the topic particularly interesting, but it is notable for having the same prickly tone Gary has taken in his other articles defending D&D so far.  It's interesting to see this side of him that I was not aware of.
• Rob Kuntz provides an article detailing a system for handling grappling and punching in D&D.  Now hand-to-hand combat has always been a particular weakness of D&D rules, but unfortunately like most rules variants that have appeared so far this one is just too complicated to be useful.  Each round of combat requires: 1. a calculation, 2. a comparison, 3. a die roll whose results are looked up on a matrix, and 4. a tracking of a score.  What I'm beginning to believe as an explanation for why rules were so complicated early on is that in this era most roleplayers were also war gamers.  War games are by nature much slower in pace, and calculations and lookups are just a matter of course, so players in this era just thought that's the way things were and expected no different from their RPG rules.
• There's a delightful article discussing strategy for the Ogre game that's both insightful and well-written.  Again, I would love to play this game at some point, but what strikes me most when reading this article is that it really sounds no different than if you were reading a modern FAQ on an RTS or MOBA game.  It could have come straight off gamefaqs.com if it were not a boardgame.
• There's a short article (apparently a fan submission) discussing - gasp - roleplaying!  As you know if you've been reading this blog I've been astounded by the lack of actual roleplaying in early D&D, in the sense of playing a character with a real personality who takes part in a story as opposed to a collection of numbers who fights monsters for loot.  But here at last we have someone advocating for this aspect of the game.  It's a short article and just briefly covers the aspects of personality, character background, and not letting character memories and motivations bleed over from one character to another, but at last we have a sign of the game beginning to mature.
• This issue contains the very first Sorcerer's Scroll column by Rob Kuntz.  It's short and mostly just contains news on the status of D&D products, but would go on to be a key feature of Dragon in years to come.
• This issue contains a Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser short story by Fritz Leiber.  I've heard a lot about F&GM in the lore of fantasy literature but admit I've never read any of the stories myself.  I've always wanted to, but I have to admit that this story left me rather...underwhelmed.  Still, I'll give it a shot someday.
• In the same vein as the hand-to-hand combat rules above, Jim Ward has an article on a specialized quarterstaff fighting system, and all my comments similarly apply.

That's all for this month.  Next month we reach another milestone - the very first AD&D product, the Monster Manual!  Join me as we uncover yet more history of the game.

An Explanation and an Apology

So all zero of my readers have surely noticed that I haven't posted in over six months now.  I apologize for the hiatus.  I have not abandoned this blog, but instead life has been rather unkind to me these last several months.  My mother passed away in January, and that was just the biggest of several challenges we've been through recently.  But I fully intend to return to this blog as life is finally returning to a semblance of normalcy.  I just need a little time to catch back up with where I was and then the posts will resume.