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.