The Dragon #19, October 1978

This issue of The Dragon falls right after the most recent GenCon and Origins, so it has a very con-heavy focus, debriefing a lot of what went on.

• There's an interesting article which gives a recap of one of the rounds at the Origins D&D tournament written from the perspective of one of the members of the winning team.  The team managed to complete both G1 and G2 modules and get most of the way through G3 before time was called.  I appreciate this because it gives a little more insight to how the game was played "back in the day".  Not surprisingly it's still a very "kick the door open and kill anything that moves," hack-and-slash kind of game.  Clever roleplaying merely consists of finding more creative and effective ways to hack and slash (and recover as much loot as possible).
• There's another article giving ideas on how to properly score a D&D tournament, which basically boils down to use as many objective (as opposed to subjective) measures as possible.  I'm not interested in the particulars of the article so much as I am just amused by the idea of a D&D tournament to begin with. I know it's always been around and is still around today, but to me personally, "competitive D&D" is an oxymoron.  It's not that I have anything against it really, and I can see the appeal to some people to the kind of game described above (like I've said before, I enjoy a little hack and slash myself every now and then).  It's just that whenever I've finished an adventure in a D&D campaign I've never found myself wondering if my group finished it "better" than another group might have.
• There's an article regarding managing magical wishes - always a sticky point for any DM. The article proposes assigning an alignment and strength level to wishes that come from magical objects in order to help the DM adjudicate the success of the wish, but ultimately I don't find the ideas very compelling.
• There's an article on creating treasures that proposes the radical idea that the treasure retrieved from a foe should have some kind of logical connection to that the foe.  I.e., a defeated thief would probably have thief-related treasure, as opposed to just whatever came up randomly on the tables in the DM's Guide. I wish this kind of sensibility had permeated the game more.
• And yet once more, because apparently players back then just loved this stuff, we get the Australian Aboriginal supplement for Gods, Demigods, and Heroes. Skip.
• There's an interesting article taking on spell caster progression, creating a new system of spell schools and requiring casters to learn spells in order by school. It's a nice way of taking on the inherent problem where a wizard can go his entire career never learning a single summoning spell, then suddenly learn an 8th level summoning spell at high level with no issue.  It also introduces a fatigue system for casting spells in place of normal Vancian rules.  It's a little rough as a system, but honestly just about anything is an improvement on the Vancian rules.

There was a decent amount of Gamma World material in this issue, but that about wraps it up.  I'll end with the beginning - the cover art for this issue.

The cover art for The Dragon has never been exceptional to this point, but...what the heck is that even supposed to be?  It looks vaguely like a dragon head, but made out of plants?? I'm not going to lie, I'm looking forward to the 80s when the artwork starts to become more professional.  Stick with me and we'll eventually get there.