Notes from My Re-read Finale

At long last - much longer than I anticipated - my re-read is complete, having caught back up to November 1978.  Here are my final notes before we finally get to move on to new items:

Tomb of Horrors

In my original post I didn't touch on the illustration booklet for the module, but I must say I really like it.  TSR would do it again for some future modules, but sadly it never became a standard for them.  I'm sure cost reasons played a factor - not only are you increasing page count, but you're also having to pay more for artwork.  Now not every module would benefit from one as much as an ultra-atmospheric adventure like Tomb of Horrors of course, but in the appropriate circumstance it's a huge aid for players in both communicating information as well as setting the tone.  The Daves (Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier) do the art for this one, and they do an excellent job of it.  Take this gargoyle for instance:

These guys having come a long way quickly, and product artwork in general has taken leaps and bounds from the ultra-amateur offerings of the original boxed set.  I have no doubt that production values like played a part in helping the brand grow so quickly.

Dragon #16

This is a minor non-D&D note, but if I described to you a game of galactic conquest where each player took on a different faction, and one of those factions was described as "Hordes of extra-galactic, insect-like warriors insidiously working into the fabric of the galaxy.  Totally incompatible with native life forms, they seek only to increase the swarm, using anyone they run into as a new food source," what would you say I was describing?  If you said the Tyranids from Warhammer 40K, you'd be wrong!  The correct answer is the Zente from a PBM game named Pellic Quest, advertised in this issue.

Google searches revealed no connection or discussion of possible connection between the two, but it's one of those things that make you wonder if someone from Games Workshop cribbed the idea from a relatively obscure game a decade earlier (Tyranids were introduced in 1987), or if it was truly a case of coincidental independent creation.  That sentence above, taken straight from the ad, is pretty on the nose, however, so if I was a betting man I'd go with the former.  This sort of thing is more common than you think, and as Mr. Plinkett says, the line between paying homage and ripping off starts to blur sometimes.  I still remember reading a cheap sci-fi paperback in college that I swear Blizzard later ripped off for the design of Starcraft.  It had it all - space marines, psychic human operatives, a psychic alien race associated with crystals, and a biotech alien race that absorbed other species.  I'm convinced one day I'll track it down and blow the lid on Blizzard's plagiarism 🤣.

Dragon #20

Okay so this one is off-topic as well, but in re-reading Dragon #20 I noticed this ad for an upcoming convention:

I knew I had seen that illustrated figure before on an album cover, and a little help from ChatGPT reminded me that it's the cover to Collective Soul's Hints, Allegations, and Things Left Unsaid:

What ChatGPT wasn't helpful with was uncovering the origin of this illustration.  Fortunately a little old fashioned Googling did the job.  Some sources (including ChatGPT's hallucinations) will say that it comes from the playbill for the Sweeney Todd musical:

However, that musical came out in 1979, whereas this issue is from 1978.  I wasn't able to confirm if this was truly the original (my curiosity was not commensurate with the effort that would be required to pursue this further), but I did find an example where it was used as advertising on an envelope from the 19th century, which you can view here.

So that's it for the re-read.  Where do we go from here?  Well, we're going to start by actually going back in time a little bit.  You see, the novel Quag Keep came out in 1978, which was the very first D&D novel, being set in Greyhawk.  Six years ago when I was first doing this blog all I had on my collection spreadsheet for a publishing date for it was the year, and so I was saving it for when I got to the end of 1978.  Since then, however, I managed to discover that it was actually published in July of 1978.  So I'm going to go back and read it now, do a post, and then once it's done I'll move on to module B1, which was published in November where we currently are in the timeline.  If you've been sticking with me I appreciate your patience as I've been laboring to get this project moving again, and I'll hope you'll join me as we at long, long last get into new material.

Notes from My Re-read Part 3

I'm still here!  After my last post I had read several Dragon issues and was most of the way through the Player's Handbook when the holidays arrived.  Let's just say our holidays thoroughly sucked this year.  Basically someone in our family (including myself) was either sick or injured continuously from Thanksgiving all the way through February.  That took a chunk out of my free time for sure, and both this blog and my YouTube channel suffered for it.  And of course as you know, once you get out of the habit of doing something it can be difficult to get back on the wagon.  But here I am again at last, so let us continue.

Dragon #14

I did talk about this in the post for Dragon #14 before, but in re-reading it I was struck by the importance of the Sorcerer's Scroll article, where Gary talks about the future direction of the game.  He discusses the meaning and purpose of the Holmes Basic Set, which was aimed at new players to bring them into the hobby, then steer them towards the upcoming AD&D game (the Player's Handbook would go out the following month).  However, he also states that it can just as easily lead them to the original D&D boxed set.  Speaking of which, he presciently states, "However, the first work [Original D&D] will never be done away with, for it offers a system which still attracts many persons."

There's definitely some interesting behind-the-scenes information regarding the choices here by TSR.  It's well known that Gary wanted to create AD&D because he believed in a more structured, codified game, but also because TSR believed they wouldn't have to pay Dave Arneson royalties on a new game like the did OD&D (a claim Arneson would contest in court).  But ultimately I guess they decided that selling more units of OD&D was better even if they did have to pay royalties, and that eventually extended to committing fully to the Basic D&D line.

In my collector's spreadsheet I have separate tabs for OD&D and Basic D&D.  You might argue that this is unnecessary, since Basic D&D was really just OD&D continued, but the contents of this article reinforce my justification that the Holmes product was a watershed moment in the history of the game, one which definitively split the product line in two from its OD&D beginnings.

AD&D Player's Handbook

Moving on from there, I re-read the Player's Handbook cover to cover.  A good refresher on the basic rules was in order before diving into the slew of modules that are coming up soon in the timeline.  One thing that stood out to me very early on was the comments on character attributes.  Gary states that the premise of the game is that player characters are intended to be above average compared to "normal" people in the game world.  This has been a point of contention for almost as long as roleplaying games have existed.  In one camp are people who insist that player characters are superior to "normal" people, and that's why they're adventurers instead of farmers or laborers.  In the other are people who believe there's no difference between an adventurer and a commoner, other than the adventurer made the difficult choice to leave a normal life behind.  This would all be merely philosophical if it didn't have ramifications for character attributes, providing justifications for different stat rolling methods that produce averages above a normal 3d6 distribution.

In this same section Gary then states that it is "usually essential" (his words) that a character have at least two scores of 15 or higher!  It's statements like this that I love to find, as compared with later products it shows the evolution of thought in roleplaying games (or at least the differing perspectives of various writers).  In the 2nd edition DMG there is a section basically devoted to the antithesis of this statement, that characters are more about what you do with them than their raw attribute scores.  It gives a hypothetical example of a player who rolls up a very "average" character.  As I recall their highest score was a 13, and they had at least three scores that were - <gasp> - below 10.  The player is obviously disappointed and convinced that this character is basically a dead man walking - doomed to die an early death at the hands of some imagined foe.  It then shows a couple of different ways you could interpret the scores and build a personality around them, turning them into an interesting character to play.

Ultimately I do not believe there is any right answer to these questions, but they come down to the preferences of a given DM and their players.  Good stats do not mean a character will be played well, and bad stats do not mean a character cannot be successful.  And sometimes the best roleplaying comes from the ultimate power gamer who has min/maxed their character to ludicrous levels - but the story of K'tak'ss the Thri-Kreen is for another day.

In the section on hit points Gary states that there are two methods for tracking them - one in which the players track their own, and another where the DM tracks them secretly, only letting players know in general terms how their characters feel - "strong", "very weak", etc.  I've never known anyone who used the latter system, except possibly temporarily as part of the gimmick of a particular encounter.  I'm curious if anyone out there has ever heard of this being done.  I think 99% of modern players would balk at the idea - what do you mean I don't know exactly how many hit points my character has?

Personally I'm not opposed to the idea either as a player or as a DM, as I think it could add a decent amount of tension to decision making, but I do think it would require very mature players to handle.  There's too much opportunity for hurt feelings among players from misunderstanding of the DM's descriptions - the player thinks "very weak" means they can risk one more blow from an enemy, while the DM thinks "very weak" means your character has 3 hit points left and you're going down if anything breathes on you too hard.  It also raises questions about how to handle differences between characters due to differences in hit point maximums.  Does a wizard at 14 out of 17 hit points feel "strong"?  Presumably yes, but then what about a fighter at 14 out of 42 hit points?  But of course the fighter probably has a superior AC to the wizard, so he has better survivability at the same hit point total, which further complicates how exactly to describe these situations.

I've made my feelings on alignment clear in previous blog posts, but I can't believe that in my original post on the PHB I didn't talk about alignment languages.  Has there ever been a more ridiculous roleplaying concept?  I love how in the section on alignment that it states that if you change alignment, you automatically forget how to speak your old alignment language.  Apparently alignment languages work on some kind of cosmic-level magic where you automatically gain or lose them when you gain or lose that alignment.  Gary sadly does not elaborate on this mechanic.

I'll admit that when I'm reading through the spell descriptions, I often glaze over the fine details, such as when it's describing the formulas for duration, size, damage, etc.  However, this time the Create Food & Water spell caught my eye.  It does exactly what it says on the tin, but just pay attention to this sentence: "each cubic foot of the material will sustain three human-sized creatures or one horse-sized creature for a full day".  Each cubic foot.  Cubic...foot.  DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH FOOD THAT IS?!?!?  Okay, so a human only needs one third of that per day, and we can divide that into thirds again for three meals.  Still, I want you to imagine a cube 6 inches on a side.  That's technically slightly bigger than 1/9th of a cubic foot, but it's a good enough approximation.  Go ahead, get a ruler if you need one.  Now imagine that entire cube is solid food.  Even if it was your favorite food in the whole world, do you think you could remotely eat that much in one sitting?  Sure, gun to your head you might, but I guarantee you 99.9% of the meals you've eaten in your life are less than 192 cubic inches worth of material.

Speaking of issues of realism, the venerable Fireball has this gem: "the heat of the fireball will melt soft metals such as gold."  Just FYI, the melting point of gold is 1,947 degrees Fahrenheit.  I'm pretty sure if a human body was exposed to that temperature - even for a brief moment like a fireball - it would flash boil all the water in your body.

Finally we arrive at the final pages of the book, which list other products for sale by TSR.  There are some interesting things to be learned here:

• I never noticed this before, but I used to think "Basic D&D" was just a term created by the community and never actually supported by TSR.  However, the first item on the list is "BASIC DUNGEONS & DRAGONS", referring to the Holmes set.  I feel like this term got dropped pretty quickly, but it's nice to know it actually was official.
• Modules G1-3 and D1-3 are all listed as for sale here, even though they would only actually be released over the next three months following the Player's Handbook (and this is a 1st printing book that I'm reading).
• Outdoor Geomorphs sets 2-4 are listed as "future release", but sadly never came to fruition.  "Walled City" was the only one ever published, but apparently there were plans for "Castle/Fortress", "Ruins", and "Rooms, Chambers & Passages".

It was fun to go back through this product, but now I'm laser-focused on finishing this re-read and moving on to new products.  I expect I'll do one final re-read post once I'm fully caught up and then we'll be on to new things (I just have to do Tomb of Horrors and the G and D series).  I hope you'll stick around for it.

Notes from My Re-read Part 2

I'm continuing this series of updates as I continue my re-read of the D&D materials I've already covered.  For one it's helping me establish the habit of posting again, and for another I'm just enjoying noticing things that perhaps did not stand out to me on my initial reading.

I've only gotten through one more product in my re-read after I closed the last post with the Holmes Basic Set, but it's a long one - the AD&D Monster Manual.  This time around I noticed in the introduction that Mike Carr talks about how D&D has spawned imitations, and of course urges readers to stick with the original and "best".  He includes this snarky quote about other roleplaying games:

...let the others be measured against the standard of quality we have striven for - a hardbound encyclopedia of monsters, for instance, as opposed to a low quality collection which is poorly assembled and bound.

I just find this a little hypocritical, given that that is where TSR itself naturally started.  If you've read Chainmail or the original boxed set then you know that they don't exactly stand out as paragons of quality.  Their revolutionary content had to succeed despite the poor writing and poor typesetting.  And while I can't comment on the physical quality, only reading PDFs myself, I feel rather sure that it fell on the "poorly assembled and bound" side of the spectrum, being produced by a fledgling company on a shoestring budget.  All in all it reeks of the obnoxiousness of someone who has improved their station in life but then looks down their nose at others still in the place they came from.

Not much else stood out to me in the book, probably due to its exceedingly dry nature, an issue I discussed in my last post regarding the Blackmoor supplement.  However, one thing I did note was that in the entry for Balors (previously type VI demons), it says that only six are known to exist!  This is a far cry from later materials, which make it clear that the Abyss is home to virtually limitless numbers of demons of all types.  I can only assume this is due to the influence of The Lord of the Rings, which I've noted in previous entries.  Balors are clearly knockoff balrogs, and while he went back and forth on the issue, at one point Tolkien had decided that there were no more than seven balrogs total, which is presumably informing this statement.  Not exactly something of monumental consequence, and as mentioned it would be retconned later, but sometimes little throwaway statements like this make for the more interesting tidbits in the evolving history of the game.

Something else you might or might not notice is that I've gone back and edited all my previous blog posts.  A lot of it is just cleanup - fixing the font and font size of entries, which is something I wasn't very fastidious about when starting, as well as correcting a few typos.  However, one major change I made that I will continue going forward is putting a picture of the cover of every product and magazine issue at the start of each post.  I have also added the metadata for products in the captions as well: the author(s), cover artist, and interior artist(s), where that information is provided (it would be a few years before TSR got around to professional publishing standards of consistently including a full list of credits on the title page).

This metadata on products is something I'm going to be paying more attention to and discussing in future blog posts.  While initially I was only interested in pure content for this reading project, over time I've decided that I want to keep track of authors and artists as well.  I'm interested to see who the heroes and zeroes of TSR's writing and art staff ended up being - which names will make me excited when I see them on the cover, and which will make me say, "Oh great, another product by X...", as well as being able to see (hopefully) the growth of these individuals as the years roll on.

As a perfect example take the Monster Manual discussed above.  Dave Sutherland did both the original cover art in 1977 as well as the updated cover art in 1983.  The difference could not be more striking:

That's a lot of artistic growth in only six years.

I don't feel I've missed very much by not discussing the metadata in posts I've already done, as there hasn't been a plethora of diversity.  Obviously Gary has written the lion's share of all the products, and familiar names like Dave Sutherland, Dave Trampier, and Tom Wham have shown up multiple times for the art.  But I'm excited to add this facet of product evolution to my writing going forward.

What's less exciting is that I've decided to add this information to my collector's spreadsheet, which means combing back through every product to fill it in.  It's not hard and really not even that tedious, but it is taking a share of my time right now.  My spreadsheet feels like it is starting to suffer from asymptotic completion, where no matter how much work I do, there's always something else I find I want to add or tweak, so that true completion seems to always be just out of reach.  I promise someday though it will be complete (or at least complete enough) and I will publish it here.

For now though I am continuing my re-read.  I'm realizing that it will take a bit of time to get through the Player's Handbook as well as all six G and D modules, but I'll keep at it and keep posting these updates as I have them.

Notes from My Re-read

So I'm about halfway done with my re-read right now, having just finished the Holmes Basic Rules.  In the interest of getting back into the habit of posting regularly I thought I'd do a brief update on some things I've gleaned during my re-read:

• When I first started this project I only had a 3rd edition copy of Chainmail, which came out well after the original OD&D boxed set.  As I was reading I naturally wondered whether some things from the boxed set had bled back into the Chainmail rules.  Well since then I've managed to find a 2nd edition copy of Chainmail, which came out before the boxed set, and which I read this time through instead.  In turns out that back-pollination from OD&D did occur in terms of wizard spells.  2nd edition has fewer spells than 3rd, and it also lacks the concept of spell "complexity", which is just spell level ported over from OD&D.  So all told a few spells as well as the spell level concept were reworked into the 3rd edition rules.
• As I was rereading the Blackmoor supplement I was struck by the description of the Sahuagin.  As opposed to just being a block of stats and a barebones description of how they fight in combat - which is the norm for monster entries of this era - it actually goes into significant detail about their society.  The result is that they feel quite fleshed out, which is rather refreshing for a product of this era.  D&D (in virtually every era) has always opted for quantity over quality when it came to giving us monsters.  We can see it already starting to gel here, but the AD&D Monster Manual would completely solidify the format of picture + stat block + very brief description, and I always wanted monster books to be so much more.  Don't just give me a brief rundown on the stats for the different types of giants, give me info on giant society.  How is it organized?  How do the various types relate to one another?  What does family structure look like?  Even with unintelligent animal-like monsters I want details like what does their lair or nest look like?  How do they fit into their local ecology?  Are they an apex predator or what hunts and eats them?  I'm sure the quantity over quality choice was made as part of an arms race with players who had memorized the stats for existing monsters (a problem which is explicitly mentioned in one of the products from my re-read, although I can't recall which one), but the detailed information I long for could have sparked the imagination of countless DMs, and in turn I believe help address the problem of player familiarity.
• I made a very brief mention of this in one of my past posts, but there are a couple of categories of products that came out in the time period I've already covered that I haven't included in this blog, those being the Geomorph accessories and the monster and treasure assortments.  The Geomorphs were basically individual sections of map that could be combined at the edges in multiple ways to allow DMs to generate large maps easily.  There were a couple for dungeons, one for caves and caverns, and one for a walled city.  The monster and treasure assortments were just that - just random lists of monsters and treasures for DMs to roll on.  While both products do have a page explaining how to use them, they're not exactly "readable" products and as such there wouldn't be much to say about them in a blog post, hence my decision to exclude them.
• The very last issue of The Strategic Review had an article recommending some music to play in the background while playing D&D.  I've certainly done this myself in a campaign I've run, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the idea of doing it went all the way back to the very beginning.
• Dragon #3 had an entry for a samurai class, and while the class itself wasn't very interesting, it did introduce the concept of critical hits to the game for the very first time.  After doing some research though I was shocked to learn that D&D was not the first roleplaying game to include the idea.  That honor goes to Empire of the Petal Throne, which came out a full year before this issue (although they were not called "critical hits" yet).  But even more shocking is that EPT was not even the first game to introduce the concept.  According to Wikipedia, it first appears in a 19th century wargame!
• I'm quite shocked at the complete lack of marketing in the Dragon.  I don't mean there are no ads (there are plenty), but rather that TSR had no concept yet of using the magazine to preview upcoming products.  In none of the Dragon issues leading up to the Holmes set is there any mention of it - no sneak peaks, no brief excerpts, not even a "hey, we're working on this" mention in the editor's column.  Apparently they just threw the Holmes set out into the world with no fanfare whatsoever.  I checked ahead and there is a one page ad for it in the following issue (2 months later!), but it's just bizarre compared to how things are managed nowadays, where every TTRPG or video game has a carefully crafted hype machine leading up to its release.  Now to be fair the TSR staff at this time are largely just amateurs winging it - I doubt at this point they even had an official marketing department.  I seem to recall they did a little better with AD&D, but we'll see if I remember correctly as I read through the next year's worth of issues.

That's all for now.  My initial guess of the re-read taking a single month was perhaps a little naive, but I'm hoping another month will see me done with it.  I'll probably do another one of these posts when I do finish, and then at long last it will be time for new content!

I Live!

Yes, I am in fact still here.  After six years I finally decided it was time to resurrect this project, as I still very much want to see it through to completion.  It's just easy to lose momentum on a project of this size when life gets in the way.  When I made my last post in 2019 we were just about to move to a new house, which is obviously a major life disruption.  Our daughter was still a baby at that point, so it took a while for life to settle back down, which it finally did...just in time for 2020.  After surviving that dumpster fire of a year, life laid on the smackdown even harder in 2021, which was without a doubt the hardest, most traumatizing year of our lives.  After taking 2022 to recover, we then started the process of adoption, which can be rather all-consuming and occupied the last couple of years.  We finally completed that journey in July.

tl;dr - life has been hard the last few years.

When I have had free time the last several years I've mostly devoted it to my YouTube channel (right here, if you're interested).  But lately the siren song of D&D has been welling up from my memories, and I decided at last to dive back in.

Now I'll be upfront, it's going to be a bit before I start regularly posting again.  I feel I need to manage expectations for all those people who've been keeping me in their subscription feed for the last half-dozen years, anxiously waiting for me to return.  That's sarcasm of course, and this is mostly just for recording my own thoughts.  I'd like to think I'm not completely shouting into the void though.

Anyway, it's been so long that I feel I need to re-read the products I've already been through to reabsorb that late-70s D&D zeitgeist before I dive into new products.  It shouldn't take terribly long - I know what I can skim and skip to speed things up.  I'm also restarting my efforts to finish my collector's spreadsheet, and my actual collection of PDFs, which is also taking some of my time.  But hopefully I'll start making new posts here in the next month or so.

And if there actually is someone out there who has followed this blog after all this time, I don't know what else to say but thank you for your incredible patience.  For everyone else, I hope you'll join me on this journey as I pick it back up again.

The Dragon #20, November 1978

So they decided to do a Halloween issue...in November...and the explanation is, um, November sucks apparently, so it needed something interesting?  Sounds more like someone couldn't get their material together in time for the holiday, but whatever.  40 years after the fact it's not like I actually care.

• <Sigh>, people are just dead set on adding every single mythos in the world as a Gods, Demigods, & Heroes supplement.  This month it's the Polynesian mythos.  Are we done now?  Can we be done?  I don't know if people actually liked this material or if it was just low hanging fruit as a way to get published in the magazine.
• Fitting the Halloween theme, there's a new article on a witch class (another appeared in an earlier edition), although these witches are a little more along the lines of historical druid-like witches vs the Satanic witches of the middle ages.  It's a pretty decent write-up for an amateur submission.  Of course, D&D would always take the official position that a witch was just a particular kind of wizard and didn't need their own class, but that obviously didn't stop people from trying.  In 2nd edition it would get the "kit" treatment at least once that I know of to placate fans.
• There's a terrific article on demon (or devil) summoning.  I always have been disappointed that D&D's summoning system...well, basically didn't exist.  There are so many interesting possibilities in building a detailed summoning system - researching the true names of summoned beings, the elements of summoning rituals, bargaining with summoned beings, etc.  But most summoning spells work just like any other spell.  The Cacodemon spell has a few elements thrown in, but it's still pretty meager.  This article goes into detail on rituals, the bargaining process, and the like.  It makes me wish for a more detailed magic system where it really pays off to specialize in schools of magic - whereas a fire wizard might become more powerful by learning more powerful fire spells (Burning Hands -> FireBall -> etc.), a summoner wizard would grow more powerful over time by gaining more and more powerful summoned creatures who served him (whether by force or by bargaining).
• There's a short but enlightening article by a DM who started keeping statistics on character death in his campaigns.  It ends up being a highly insightful look into the nature of the game at this point.  He recorded deaths only of player characters and their followers (not mercenaries or other NPCs), and recorded 600 in a 2-3 year period!  Can you imagine?  His tone indicates that most DMs still see their role as the adversary of the party, seeking to do them by any means necessary.  Obviously players under such a paradigm have to get used to rolling up characters one after another, as each previous one meets a new grisly end.  The statistics themselves aren't that interesting, with goblin-kin taking the top spot on the list of killers - not because they are the most dangerous foe, obviously, but because they are the most commonly encountered, and because they are often encountered in significant numbers.  I've said it before, but I'll be most interested to see the transition of the game from a hack and slash meat grinder that chews through player characters and enemies alike to more modern roleplaying sensibilities.
• Finally we get an article on demonic possession, something that never really made it into official material on demons and devils.  I don't know, maybe even Gary had his limits.  It's not very interesting - basically a demon possesses a party member who then most likely just attacks the rest of the party.  Still, like the article on summoning demons, I appreciate fans trying to add these aspects into the game.  I also wonder to what extent content like this came back to bite TSR when they had to start dealing with the Satanic panic of the 80s.  I guess we'll see in time.

That's all for this issue.  There was a lot of material devoted to other games, and besides the witch article and the two demonology-related articles it really wasn't much of a Halloween issue.  But now we get to an actual product again - the very first Basic D&D module - In Search of the Unknown.  I'll see you there.

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 though by going back to 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. 

D3 Vault of the Drow

3rd printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Cover Artist: Dave Sutherland (Erol Otus 6th printing and beyond)

We finish up the D series with this module, and again, it follows the same format as the previous two:

• There are three detailed minor encounters: a Drow checkpoint, a nest of giant spiders, and most interestingly, a cave in which dwells a succubus and her vampire Drow lover.  A pretty interesting concept roleplaying-wise, but again, the only thing to do here is just kick down the door and kill them.  The giant spider nest has a pretty cool idol of Lolth that gives its possessor the powers of a spider, but makes them completely possessive of the item and gradually turns them into a giant spider.  This is why you never touch the obvious item of evil.
• I haven't touched on it yet in previous modules, but the D series introduced not only the Drow, but also the concept of their adamantite weapons and armor.  This gives all such items a bonus of +1 to +5, even though the items are not actually magical.  The module gives plenty of rules to make sure the party can't benefit from them though (at least outside of these modules).  Adamantite items decay if exposed to sunlight, and they lose their bonus in any case if removed from the Drow homeland for more than a month, as they get their powers from the special "radiation" in the underworld.  It's purely a gimmick by Gary to up the difficulty factor of the modules, since they're designed for characters level 9 and up.  I'm a software developer, and in software there's a concept called "code smell".  If you're looking at some code that works but still doesn't seem right, it is called a code smell and sometimes indicates a deeper problem in the architecture of the system.  Having to artificially create a gimmick like this to increase the difficulty of a module without also giving away the bank and letting characters walk out with an entire armory's worth of magical weapons and armor from defeated enemies is an RPG smell, and indicates a deeper fundamental problem in the rules - namely a flaw in the design of the hit and armor class system progression.
• And so we come to the titular vault, and there's an explanation of how minerals in the roof give a dim illumination to everything.  It's a vaguely scientific explanation, where a mineral called tumkeoite radioactively decays into lacofcite, giving off a ghostly purple glow in doing so.  "Tumkeoite" is actually a play on the name of Tom Keogh (whom you may recognize from the eponymous Keogh's Ointment), while "lacofcite" is a play on Len Lakofka.
• This module takes a similar tack to D2 that I just find a bit puzzling.  If the players have collected the medallions they've found on defeated Drow in previous encounters, then they can present them when they enter the vault and basically have free run of the place.  Just like the shrine, even though this is a place full of villains, they can just wander around.  The modules have made clear that the Drow (and the Kuo-Toa of the previous module, too) hate surface dwellers, but when surface dwellers show up to their respective areas, as long as they have the right tchotchkes, everything's just cool apparently.  I realize that the logical alternative - a city full of Drow who kill surface dwellers on sight - would be untenable, but I still just feel there was a better way.
• At last we arrive at the Drow city of Erelhei-Cinlu.  Gary created the name by using the first syllable of each of his kids' names (Ernie, Elise, Heidi, Cindy, and Luke).  It's a tremendously intriguing place - a dangerous, decadent, and depraved hive of evil, full of every sin and vice imaginable.  Demons, vampires, and more wander the streets (as if the Drow weren't dangerous enough), and the party is warned that they wander the back streets at their peril.  But all that appears in the module is just a few paragraphs slightly more expansive than what I just gave you.  There are no particular locations detailed, no NPCs, just a vague description, and if the party wants to do more than wander the streets aimlessly for random encounters, it's up to the DM to create something to do.  It's just so head-scratching to me, and completely counter to what you would expect to find in a modern adventure.
• FINALLY, six modules into this series (including the three G modules) we actually are told in full what the story is!  Can you believe this?  I mean, I understand that from the players' point of view it's supposed to be an unfolding mystery, but usually you don't want to keep the DM in the dark as well.  So here in full is the story behind these modules: Drow society is made up of multiple noble houses that vie with one another for power.  The most powerful house, Eilservs, has contended that Drow society needs a queen to unify it (which naturally should come from them, being the most powerful).  A coalition of less powerful houses, backed by the priestesses of Lolth, has opposed Eilservs and its own allies.  As a result, Eilservs has forsaken the worship of Lolth and pledged themselves to an Elder Elemental God (whose shrine appeared in G3), and Drow society is now in a sort of cold war over the issue.  Eilservs, led by the priestess Eclavdra, has attempted to gain power by moving to the surface, creating a coalition of giants and other evil creatures, and spreading the worship of their deity.  She had hoped to gain enough power through this plan to install herself as Queen.  This is what was behind the coordinated giant raids on civilized lands, and what the party has been thwarting.  The thing is, this little detail of the story is only given to the DM, almost as a side note in numbered location description of the Eilservs compound.  In no place is the party given any hooks or means of finding this out on their own.  It's like the players have to go hunting for the story, which again is so counter to how adventures should be written.  I try not to get too frustrated over this - I mean, to be fair, Gary is literally inventing the art of writing adventures as he goes, so obviously it will take some time to get the kinks out.
• This module introduces daemons (the *-loth creatures of 2nd edition), specifically the mezzodaemon and nycadaemon.  One thing I'll say about D&D is that I do like it's demonology, from the pact making devils, to the mercenary daemons, to the plain monstrous demons.  There are still some things I would change, but overall it's one of the things I feel D&D did really well monster-wise.
• The party can fight Lolth in this module if desired.  The whole presentation of her is very confusing to me.  It makes it clear that she is a demon lord and resides on a plane in the Abyss, but at the same time it makes it sound like she lives full time in the Drow temple to her.  I guess it's her avatar or something, but considering that 99% of the content of all the G and D series modules consists of just detailing the combat abilities or treasure of things the party can fight, I'm not surprised it's not well explained.

And with that we wrap up both this module and the D series.  I'll leave you with what is without doubt the most awesome part of this module - a drawing of a hypothetical battle with Lolth.  Now in this drawing the wizard is actually supposed to be flying, but the artwork does a poor job of making that clear, so instead he appears to be doing a flying karate kick at Lolth.  He's the man!

D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa

3rd printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Cover Artist: Dave Sutherland

The D series adventure continues, and this module uses the exact same format as the last: two minor encounters followed by one major keyed location at the end, with the rest of the action determined by how lost the party wants to get in the maze of surrounding tunnels.

• This module is notable to me for including what I consider to be the very first NPC in any module.  Now technically there were some in previous modules, but usually they were prisoners meant to be freed by the party, like the siren in Tomb of Horrors or the storm giantess in Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.  To me, a true NPC is a character who has 1) a name, 2) a personality, and 3) an encounter with the party whose outcome depends on how the party roleplays.  Enter Thoopshib, a slightly insane rogue Kuo-Toa who operates a ferry across an underground river that the party must negotiate with.  History should have remembered you better, Thoopshib.
• This module is a little light on content.  After dealing with Thoopshib to get across the river and encountering some deep gnomes who might accompany the party, we jump straight to the titular shrine itself.  The shrine is a bit of a strange place, as the Kuo-Toa are not automatically hostile to the party.  If they wish, the party can sight-see the shrine and just pass through, making it a very short adventure.  The party really has to go looking for trouble in the shrine.  Now that's a nice change of pace from the norm, which usually involves busting down the door of some place where the party expects pretty much everything to be hostile, but it's a little strange for the climax of the module.
• The Kuo-Toa deity Blibdoolpoolp is introduced here, and the party can meet her if they desire, which again just seems strange.  Using her altar that is the focus of the shrine teleports the user to the elemental plane of water in her presence.  Making a sufficient offering to her grants the user a small favor, plus the ability to speak Kuo-Toan, so yeah.
• One thing I haven't commented on before is Gary's writing style.  He is obviously very well read and has an extensive vocabulary which he does not hesitate to use.  Quite often he'll use words far out of the norm. For example, one of the locations in the shrine is referred to as a seraglio.  That's just another word for harem, but darn if I knew that without looking it up.  I can never tell if he does it on purpose to show off or not.

That's all for this module.  We finish up the D series next time with Vault of the Drow.

D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth

1st printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Cover Artist: Dave Sutherland

We now begin the D series of modules, sequels to the G series.  Having discovered that the Drow were behind the giants' attacks on civilization in Hall of the Fire Giant King, the party is now following the passage from Snurre's hall that leads into, well, the depths of the earth in order to discover more about the long-forgotten Drow menace.

• An amusing tidbit on the cover reveals that TSR clearly didn't have publication down to a rigorous science just yet.  I have a copy of the first printing of D1, and on the cover it talks about using this module in conjunction with the rest of the D series, the G series, and module Q1, which it calls "soon to be released".  Q1 was, in fact, not released for two more years.  Keep in mind that at this point in the timeline we're still also waiting for the Dungeon Master's Guide, which will not be released for another year.  Of course this is all just a symptom of Gary trying to write everything himself.
• This module takes a slightly different tack than the G series in its presentation.  All three G modules were simply keyed locations the party systematically cleared.  Here, though, the DM is presented with a hex map covering several dozen miles in both directions with vague drawings of underground connections between locations.  Only three encounter areas are detailed, the final of which is a large keyed area much in the vein of the G series, but the rest of the action is left to exploration by the party and the random encounters it would naturally generate.  It feels like Gary was trying to experiment with a different module type, which is nice, as the keyed location concept was already wearing thin after just three modules.  I will say though, the presentation is incredibly confusing.  Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no idea where the final detailed encounter is supposed to be located on the area hex map.
• Mind flayers make their first module appearance and are given the name "illithid" for the first time, this apparently being their Drow name.  Jermlaine are also introduced in this module for the first time.
• An oddity I noticed is that in the various encounters players can recover items from the Drow inscribed with their house names, but Gary doesn't bother to explain (even to the DM) that that's what they are or their significance.  I don't know if this is an oversight on his part, or just an attempt to maintain an air of mystery for the other two modules.
• This module pulls no punches in difficulty.  In exploring the final encounter location the party can run into both a purple worm and a 20th level lich, because why not?  The use of the lich is to me another indication of the primitive state of the game.  Personally I feel that liches are so powerful and the possibilities for them so great that they shouldn't just be thrown around like other monsters.  If you need a simple, high level encounter for a high level party, sure, give them a purple worm - it's basically just a very large and dangerous animal.  But a lich should be a unique creature with a unique story and a unique place in the game world.  Just having them be another entry in a keyed location that the party stumbles into and has to deal with demeans what they can be.  Tomb of Horrors was much better in this regard.  True, we didn't learn a ton about Acererak, but the fact that he had surrounded himself with a lair of devious and deadly traps was much more in the spirit of how liches should be handled - unlike here, where a lich is also a possibility for a random encounter if the players get off into the side passages.  A lich should never be a random encounter, period.

That's about all there is to say for this module.  It feels a bit purposeless, as by the end of the module the players haven't really accomplished anything besides exploring the underworld and dealing with a few encounters.  Granted, it is meant to set up the remaining two D modules, which is were we will pick up next time.

The Dragon #18, September 1978

The Dragon marches on with another issue:

• The issue starts with a detailed article on the Traveller roleplaying game.  I know nothing about the game at all, but still found it a fascinating read due to superb writing by the author (a real rarity in these early issues of the magazine).  The point of his article can be summed up by saying that the success of a character is far more related to how they are played than by the random stats they are generated with.  I've mentioned this topic before, and it's something we no longer even think about really given that randomly generated character stats have largely gone the way of the dinosaur in modern RPGs (tabletop or video game).  In days of yore, some players (*cough*munchkins*cough*) would whine when they rolled up a character who they felt didn't have good enough stats, and that became their excuse when the character failed.  Nowadays when you roll up a human paladin in World of Warcraft you know he is exactly the same as every other human paladin that ever has or ever will be rolled up, which eliminates that particular excuse.  Sadly though, now our excuses have shifted to whining about balance problems between races or classes.
• There's quite a few game reviews in this issue, from the Traveller game already mentioned (and yes, they do intentionally spell it with two 'l's), to some board and miniature games, to my favorite board game of all time (which I've talked about previously), Cosmic Encounter.  Alas for the lack of time to be able to experience all these different games...
• We get a couple of articles on magic for D&D.  One is a list of new spells researched by players in the author's campaign.  They're a little on the powerful side, and I don't believe any of them ultimately caught on.  The other in an article discussing the theory of magic - elements like the Law of Similarity and the Law of Contagion, etc.  It's interesting, but really only useful if you're going to be creating your own magic system to replace the existing one.
• There are a few short articles that demonstrate how not to write an article.  First is an article on weapons for monks based on traditional Japanese weapons, but the author bizarrely forgets to include actual stats for any of the weapons.  Second is an article on poison that I don't even understand.  Finally there is an article on NPC stats for shop owners that shows that most people just don't know how to design rules that are simple and mesh well with the existing system.  Good writing is definitely at a premium at this point, mainly because the magazine is still relying heavily on fan submissions.  It will be a while before it transitions to professional staff writers.

Some articles for other games (Boot Hill, Metamorphosis Alpha, Gamma World) round things out, including this month's Sorcerer's Scroll.  We get back to products now with the D series of modules.

The Dragon #17, August 1978

We're at the point in history where the art is perfectly straddling the line between "bad" and "badass"

What awaits us in this month's The Dragon?

• We start with an article on vampires, where the author gives advice both to the DM for playing vampires and to players for combating them.  It's short, but has a bit of worthwhile material.
• Another author updates the jousting system from Chainmail to account for fighter level in D&D.
• There's a lengthy and fun recounting of a D&D session from the Winter Fantasy I convention DM'ed by Gary Gygax where the players ended up being teleported to the Metamorphosis Alpha setting.  What follows is rather funny tale of magic users and clerics trying to come to terms with androids, ray guns, and mutants.
• Jim Ward has an interesting article introducing a proto-concept for specialist magic users.  It doesn't rely on the schools of magic like later specialism would, but rather groups spells by type, like attack, defense, detection, movement, etc.  It's not super compelling, and I doubt it was the seed for the specialist concept as it appeared in 2nd edition, but it's interesting from the standpoint of seeing people have ideas even in the infancy of the game that would later become staples of the system.
• There's a short and odd article on illusory sights and sounds for a DM to use in the dungeon.
• There's a section for new creatures, but two of them are jokes and the third is just pointless.  Tim Kask must have been really hard up for material for this issue.
• An article encourages the use of hyperdimensional geometry in dungeons to confuse mapmakers.  I've seen some material go overboard in its efforts to trip up mapmakers for sure, but still I feel this is a bit of a lost art nowadays.
• Jim Ward continues to be a prolific writer for the magazine with a second article, this time on ideas for dungeon level design based on historical periods.
• Another variant article introduces angels to the game.  Seeing as they're a natural complement to demons and devils I'm surprised it took this long for them to appear.

A few other non-D&D articles not worth mentioning round out the issue.  Next up we've got one more issue before diving in to the D series of modules.  I'll see you there.

G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King

1st printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Interior Artists: Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier

Shocker of shockers, I was pretty much on target with my guess in the last post that the third module would indeed follow the same format as the previous two.  There are some minor differences of course.  There are now three levels to explore instead of two, and the players come face to face with the Drow for the first time, putting a name and a face to the unseen menace behind the giant attacks that has only been hinted at in the first two modules.  The stakes are higher, too, and just from reading you can tell the difficulty has definitely been upped.  But what really struck me when reading this module was just how dense it was, both in monsters and treasure.  King Snurre's hall is literally bursting with creatures - far more than you would think could live in such a space, considering that most all of them a giant-sized.  I'm not sure the scale was well thought out here.  In addition, the amount of treasure in this module approaches ludicrous levels.  I swear it would take a team of porters a week to haul every last gem and gold piece out of this place.  I'm wondering how this plays in to the gold pieces = XP gained rule of 1st edition as well.  I don't remember exactly how it was worded in the Player's Handbook, but do players just have to discover treasure to get the XP for it, or do they actually have to take possession of it (i.e, haul it out of the dungeon)?  I'm pretty sure it's the latter, in which case I can only imagine how many 1st edition sessions were derailed by meta-game considerations of needing to pause the action while the party carted out the loot they had found because they didn't want to lose out on the XP.  I'm rather glad the game had done away with this concept by the time I started playing.

The module ends with the players discovering a tunnel leading away from King Snurre's hall into the unknown depths of the earth.  We have a couple of months' worth of The Dragon to get through, then we can pick this plot back up with the D series of modules.

G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl

2nd printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Cover Artist: Dave Trampier
Interior Artists: Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier

This is the sequel to Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and begins immediately if the characters chose to use the magic chain at the end of that adventure to teleport to this one.  There's honestly not much to say about this one.  It follows an identical format to the previous one, with the players exploring both above ground and below ground keyed locations.  Instead of hill giants the primary opponents are now frost giants, and instead of a wooden fortification in a forest, now they're exploring a series of caves in a glacial rift.  The enemies are all typical cold-natured monsters like winter wolves, a remorhaz, etc.  And once again at the end they find a teleporter that takes them to the location of the next module, Hall of the Fire Giant King.  I'm going to go way out on a limb here with a prediction that that module will be the same thing as well, only now with a theme of fire!  Join me next time where we'll see if my wild guess turns out to be correct.

G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief

2nd printing cover

Author: Gary Gygax
Cover Artist: Dave Sutherland
Interior Artists: Dave Sutherland and Dave Trampier

Here we are, one of the most played and most loved modules of all time.  I've always heard about the Against the Giants modules, but never knew anything about them, so I'm excited to delve in and see what these first AD&D modules were like.  Let's do it then:

• The very first thing I note is that the hill giant chief in the background is named Nosnra, "a grossly fat and thoroughly despicable creature, sly and vicious, loving ambush and backstabbing."  The odd name and terrible description piqued my interest, and I immediately noticed that Nosnra backwards is fairly close to Arneson - as in Dave Arneson.  A little googling confirms my suspicions that this was a little character assassination on Gary's part.  I have to say my opinion of him has rather plummeted as a result of this project.
• Again, I'm surprised to find that this is a fairly high level module.  Given that AD&D was brand new, you would think they would want to start with some 1st level modules, like they ended up doing with the B series for Basic D&D (maybe by then they had learned their lesson).
• There's not much to say beyond that.  There's no story here beyond "giants have been attacking lately and causing problems, so go stop them."  The format is a simple dungeon crawl through keyed rooms.  There aren't a ton of traps, so it's a pretty straightforward fumigate-and-loot kind of place.  It's also surprisingly short.  Not that I was expecting much more, since the game is still in its infancy.  I do like the teases for the next module though - a paper with instructions signed by the mysterious "Eclavdra", and the magic chain which teleports the party to the location of the next module.

All three giant modules were released together, so stick with me as we go straight into the sequel, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl.

The Dragon #16, July 1978

We've had two iconic products for the last two posts, but we're back to The Dragon again for now.  Let's get to it:

• This issue doesn't start off promising.  You may recall a while back how much I complained about a Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes supplement for the Cthulhu mythos that appeared.  Someone then wrote a letter in a later article kvetching about some of the choices the authors made (rather than the stupidity of the whole thing in the first place).  Well now we have more of our time wasted by a response article to that article!  People apparently take their Cthulhu very seriously.  This is immediately followed by yet one more G, D-G, and H supplement for the Sumerion/Babylonian/Canaanite mythologies.
• We next have a variant introducing the ninja to the game.  This is not meant to be a new player class, as the author admits that it is far too overpowered.  Just imagine a fighter who also has the abilities of a thief, assassin, and monk and you have a good picture.  It's actually presented as an aid for DMs to use as a "hit man" on player characters.  Seriously.
• Jim Ward has another good "The Adventures of Monty Haul", lampooning ridiculous high level play.
• Gary Gygax takes this month's Sorcerer's Scroll with an article whose tone is rather pedantic and condescending.  The article is a supposed rebuttal of players who want more realism in the game, but it's just Gary defending his baby again.  How dare anyone suggest they can come up with better rules than him!  His points basically boil down to 1) it's a game, which is by definition an abstraction of reality, not reality itself, so concerns with realism are pointless, and 2) it's fantasy, so realism goes out the window the moment you accept that magic exists in the game world.  However, these points are both straw men when it comes to the realism debate.  He does have some good points - for instance, you can't change just one part of the game without examining how that part fits with and impacts the whole - but misapplies them when it comes to actual D&D rules.  For instance, some players wonder why magic-users can't use swords or fighters can't use wands.  From a realism standpoint, what's to say a magic user couldn't devote time to learning how to sword fight, or a fighter learn to use simple wands?  The answer in the context of D&D rules is obvious and he explains - because it would destroy the distinctiveness of character classes.  If every class can do everything, there's no point in having classes.  Certainly some rule variants do get out of hand in trying to make a god class (see the ninja variant previously in this issue), which spoils the game for all involved (and believe me, I've played a campaign with an out-of-control god character - a story I'll relate someday).  But the fact that letting any character learn any skill creates problems does not prove that a "realistic" approach is inherently flawed, but rather proves that there is a greater problem with the game mechanics themselves - namely, that character classes are a flawed concept.  This is why I am a much bigger fan of rule systems that let players learn whatever skills they want, even if they come from different "professions".  Those systems avoid the god class problem though because they add another dose of realism - a person can only learn so much, and you can either have a broad but shallow knowledge of many things, or a narrow and deep knowledge of a few.  Thus a character can indeed learn both swords and spells, but they'll never be either a master swordsman or an archmage.  He also brings up the example of demihuman races - they have a lot of nice racial abilities that are compensated for by having level limits.  If those limits were removed, no one would ever play a human anymore.  But again, this is just hiding a deeper problem, which is the unnecessary imbalance between humans and demihumans.  Simply balance racial abilities and then artificial and illogical level limits can be done away with.  It gets funnier in hindsight when he goes on to bash two sets of rules that later on became official optional rules - double-damage critical hits and weapon expertise (and critical hits were in fact a primary rule in 4th edition).  He complains that those that want critical hits don't logically consider that monsters should get them too for balance purposes, and claims this would somehow make the game too deadly (now I do have an issue with critical hit tables that allow for instant-kills, as I have lost a character to these before), and that nobody considers that if you allow critical hits, you also have to allow critical failures.  He then takes on weapon expertise, claiming that if fighters can get expertise, monsters should too.  I do agree that optional weapon expertise rules do simply add to a fighter's power without giving anything in return, but I'm just amused at the level of hissy fit he throws over it.  Finally he takes on spell point systems for magic users, which again is hilarious in hindsight considering that mana-based magic systems are so fundamental to fantasy gaming now that we don't even think about it.  He makes clear at the end of the article that all of this is a result of some attacks that had been made on him in some amateur publications.  I don't have those materials, so I can't gauge how appropriate his response is, but I have to admit I'm rather disappointed that every time Gary writes for The Dragon on matters like these it always seems he does so in a whiny and petulant tone.
• Next - obviously carefully chosen by the editor to back up Gary - is an article/variant complaining about players who want their magic user to be able to use a mace or their cleric to use a sword.  It attempts to give an in-world justification to these rules, then provides rules that do allow characters to wield these weapons, but at a hefty price.  Coming down hard on players who want to play a certain kind of character is a classic case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  Sure, some players are just trying to selfishly make a god character so they can rule the game, but other players just want to create the character they see in their imagination - they want to be Gandalf, wielding both spells and the sword Glamdring at the same time.  It's again a symptom of the disease of character classes, and I'm sad that modern gaming still clings to the concept so hard (although some games like Skyrim thankfully buck the trend).
• As if in counterpoint to all the D&D defense going on in this issue, there's an ad for the new RuneQuest RPG.  I'm not sure if it has appeared in previous issues already, but it caught my eye in this one for the text, which claims it is based on a "REALISTIC SET OF FANTASY RULES [emphasis theirs], based on experience and reality rather than an arbitrarily developed abstract mathematical system."  Take that, Gary!  D&D is not named, of course, but it's clear that's where that particular barb is aimed.  It goes on to proclaim "No Artificial Character Classes!!"  I know nothing about RuneQuest at all, but when they promote stuff like this as their differentiator from D&D it definitely makes me want to take a look.
• We get the second part of the Harold Shea story.  It's just meh.
• Finally, Jim Ward has a brief article extolling the virtues of high-powered play, where dungeons are full of great treasure guarded by tremendous challenges.

So much for another issue.  Sorry to get on my soapbox there for a bit, but hey, if Gary can do it, I can do it to.  Join me next time as we start perhaps the most famous D&D adventures of all time, the Against the Giants series!