On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another Dungeon Master and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and Goodman Games’ Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. Some fanzines though, do traditional fantasy, but not in the way that you might expect.

Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is a fanzine for .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG. Published by Project NERVES, .Dungeon is a storytelling game which plays around with ideas and conventions behind the play of a MMORPG, using this to help the players build and explore a shared experience of playing in a shared play space. The conceit behind Pregame Lobby Issue #1 continues that of .Dungeon as a MMORPG in that it moves the online game from a beta test and into full release, presenting the space onscreen in the game where the publisher can gives updates about the game, a player can find other players, and so on, before leaping into the game’s first event. So there is a ‘Your friend’s list’, a list of your friends that are playing and what their current status and an introduction to the game’s launch event quest. This primarily focuses upon the release of a new play area, ‘Snowbleak’, and even carries the warning, “Don’t fast travel to Snowbleak”. Snowbleak is also a hexcrawl in terms of the pen and paper roleplaying and it turns out that the village and its surrounds atop the wintery mountain are infested with zombies. Zombies that are very difficult to kill! At every server reset, a fresh blanket of snow drops onto both mountain and village and every day at 12:01 Pacific Standard Time, all of the surviving zombies get up and make a co-ordinated attack on the village. The problem is that it takes a lot of co-ordinated damage—for which the players/Player Characters—are going to have to work together to inflict. If they succeed, the zombie is removed from the server, but if they fail, the zombie just gets up again. Worse, if a player/Player Character loses all of his Connection (to the server)—the equivalent of Hit Points in .Dungeon—he will not only die, but a zombie will rise in his image, thus increasing the number of zombies blighting Snowbleak!

As a hexcrawl/region to explore, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 includes a PVP Arena, a cave home to a roaming boss monster, a couple of NPCs to encounter, the location of Snowbleak, and a table of random encounters. The ‘PVP Enabled Dueling Arena’ allows an aspect of the MMORPG to be brought into the traditional roleplaying, which the latter traditionally avoids, and that is player versus player combat. Or rather, the conceit of it. For whilst ‘PVP Enabled Dueling Arena’ includes tables to generate players to face in the arena in .Dungeon, these are, of course, not Player Characters in the traditional roleplaying sense. In this way, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 continues the conceit of .Dungeon. Several NPCs are detailed, including Colossus, a roaming Boss monster which the players/Player Characters can persuade to help them if they know how.

Snowbleak—variously described as a city and a village in Pregame Lobby Issue #1, but definitely a randomly generated settlement from pre-beta best known for the ease of the beginning quests in and around the area. All that seems to remain is a few buildings around a river crossing, inhabited by those NPCs who not yet been driven out by the zombies. The descriptions do feel underwritten, in particular, it would have been useful to have included a Quest or two that the players/Player Characters can undertake. That said, there is plenty of scope for the Game Master to develop these and further content in and around Snowbleak, including on the backside of the mountain, given a cursory description in its own region/hexcrawl at the back of the fanzine. Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is rounded out with a list of cheat codes for .Dungeon to further enforce its conceit.

Physically, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 eschews the landscape format of .Dungeon, but not the bold colours and bitmapped style font for its titles. The layout feel perfunctory, but the artwork throughout is excellent.

Pregame Lobby Issue #1 is both a lovely little supplement for .Dungeon and slightly disappointing. It does feel underwritten, as if there should be more to the location of Snowbleak. Some of that is due to the conceit, that .Dungeon and thus the region of Snowbleak is a MMORPG and their play is not as demanding or as involving as a traditional pen and paper, tabletop roleplaying game typically is. However, .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG is actually played as a traditional pen and paper, tabletop roleplaying game, so the details and the involvement required are greater. Ultimately, Pregame Lobby Issue #1 provides a good introductory setting for .Dungeon – an alternate reality RPG, but the Game Master will probably want to add her own content to flesh it out further...

 The first room on the left is a Ritual Room.

This room has altars and ritual spaces dedicated to the demon lords Akelarre and Orcus, the arch Devil Dispater, and to the dark gods Ereshkigal, Hecate, and Hel. The last and central altar is to the Vampire Queen herself.

There are treasures here upwards of 100,000 gp, but all are cursed.  Removing them from this room requires a save vs. Death or die. A Remove Curse can be used, but it must be done on each item. There are seven altars here.

There are no creatures here.

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.
Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. Then there is also Old School Essentials.
Carcass Crawler is ‘The Official Fanzine Old-School Essentials zine’. Published by Necrotic Gnome, Old School Essentials is the retroclone based upon the version of Basic Dungeons & Dragons designed by Tom Moldvay and published in 1981, and Carcass Crawler provides content and options for it. It is pleasingly ‘old school’ in its sensibilities, being a medley of things in its content rather than just the one thing or the one roleplaying game as has been the trend in gaming fanzines, especially with ZineQuest. Carcass Crawler #1 focused on Classes and Races alongside its other support for Old School Essentials, whereas although Carcass Crawler Issue #2 does provide new Races and Classes, it instead focuses on general support for the Player Character and playing Old School Essentials. Carcass Crawler Issue #3 continues the fanzine’s thread of providing new Classes for Old School Essentials.

Carcass Crawler Issue #3 describes five new character Classes and four new Races. What this means is that it follows standard Old School Essentials rules in that it allows for ‘Race as Class’ as well as supporting the separation of Race and Class as per Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy. ‘New Classes and Races’ by Gavin Norman opens with the first of its new Classes, the ‘Beast Master’. This Class gains a number of loyal animal companions equal to its Level, can identify tracks, and can come to understand the speech of animals and communicate with them. Essentially, this is a Class is going to see the Player Character controlling a pack of animals for various purposes depending upon the animal. Exactly what each animal can do is going for the player and the Game Master to decide. The ‘Dragonborn’ is the first of the four ‘Race as Class’ options in the issue and the first which harks back to an earlier edition of Dungeons & Dragons, in this case, Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. The Dragonborn has a breath weapon and partial immunity according to its draconic bloodline, and so on, and is generally similar to the Dragonborn of Dungeons & Dragons. The ‘Mutoid’ is the first of two radically different Classes. It consists of a demihuman with randomly determined mismatched body parts, such as Beast Ears for improved hearing and Spring Legs for a leap attack. The Class has several Thief skills, plus Mimicry, and can eventually set up a secret lair and start a Thieves’ Guild, but in general, are shunned by society. The second radically different Class is the Mycellian, a humanoid mushroom who can emit a spray of Fungal Spores—either pacifying or hallucinogenic, grow in stature increasing its unarmed combat damage and natural Armour Class, and relies on telepathy for communication. Once a Mycellian reaches Sixth Level it can found an underground stronghold and create a fungal zombie as a minion. The Mycellian is a pleasingly personal take upon the mushroom men-style monster of Dungeons & Dragons. The last of the new races is the second to be obviously drawn from a previous version of Dungeons & Dragons, this time from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Second Edition. The Race is the Tielfling and it has Fiendish Heritage, Fiendish Appearance, and a Fiendish Gift, typically a spell or resistance. It also has the power to Beguile with its words and knows the Thief’s stealth skills.
These are all a nice selection of Classes, presenting the Game Master with plenty of choice in terms of deciding what Races she has in her campaign and she is given advice to that end. All five Classes though are presented in the standard two-page spread for Old School Essentials, making them highly accessible. Four of the ‘Race as Class’ Classes—Dragonborn, Mutoid, Mycellian, and Tielfling—are in turn presented as Races. This enables their use in combination with a Class as per Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy.
Also by Gavin Norman is ‘Expanded Equipment’. For Adventuring Gear, this adds thing such as the bucket, magnifying glass, sledgehammer, and more. Weapons & Armour lists padded armour, furs, studded leather, banded mail, and full plate, so encompassing the wider range of armour found in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, whilst new weapons include bastard sword, blackjack, blowgun, bolas, and more. These also have weapon qualities, like Entangle for the whip and Versatile for the bastard sword, which can be used one-handed or two-handed. Overall, it expands the range of equipment and options available to a campaign and the players and their characters.
Donn Stroud pens ‘Woodland Monsters’. This is a bestiary of eight creatures. It includes the ‘Bracketfolk’, humanoid bracket fungi who live in families on a single tree; ‘Burlbug’ are gnarled nocturnal, and territorial simians who howl when disturbed or annoyed and like to collect gems; the ‘Corpse Vine’ is a carnivorous plant that hangs from trees and pulls up its victims to constrict and slowly digest them, tempting them with prior victims turned into twitching corpses; the ‘Ghoul-Stag’ is a horrible decaying corpse of a deer animated after the bite of a Ghoul; the Skull Spider Nettle is a mobile carnivorous plant which occupies skulls and scuttles around injecting its spores into its victims using its lashes; the ‘Spell Croaker’ is a giant tree frog infused with magic as a tadpole, which can randomly disgorge a spell, whilst the ‘Spell Croaker Tadpole’ is the immature form, which flies around disenchanting magical items and spell-casters; and lastly, ‘Stick-Children’ are insects which cover themselves in branches they saw from trees with their mandibles, giving them a humanoid appearance. There is a good mix here which the Game Master can pick and choose from to populate the woodlands in her campaign.

Lastly, Gavin Norman gives advice on monsters in ‘Creating Monsters’. It is a very straightforward piece, suggesting that the Game Master begin with tweaking or re-skinning an existing monster rather than starting from scratch. However, if that does not work in the given situation, it guides the Game Master through an eight-step process, looking at factors to consider at each step. This starts with the imagination and then goes through Hit Dice, Armour Class, Movement Rate, Attacks, and Special Abilities before calculating Derived Stats and taking into account any final details. To be honest the article is one the like of which has been written again and again about Dungeons & Dragons-style monsters and their creation. This does not mean that the advice or the article are poor. In fact, this is a useful article which lets the Game Master look at monsters from another angle.
Physically, Carcass Crawler Issue #3 is well written and well presented. The artwork is excellent.
Carcass Crawler Issue #3 feels as if it is capping off a trilogy that comprises a character Class compendium for Old School Essentials. Indeed, Necrotic Gnome could present all of the Classes and Races to appear in the pages of the fanzine and it would be a serviceable supplement providing further options for player and Game Master alike. Hopefully, future issues will contain fewer new Classes and open up the otherwise excellent support for Old School Essentials that Carcass Crawler provides to wider content. That said, Carcass Crawler #3 is a solid issue and its Classes and monsters are interesting and the fanzine continues to be an enjoyable old school-style publication.

 How about something to lighten the mood around here.

This was shared by a friend. I had seen it on my feed, but he reminded me that it would be good for today.

Periodic Table of Elementals, by Catilus

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/catilus/periodic-table-of-elementals-by-catilus?ref=theotherside

Catilus is giving us something that honestly we should have all figured out decades ago. But here we get her fantastic art and 5e monsters.

Catilus has been putting out some high-quality and fun 5e books for a while now, and I expect this one will be her best yet.

From her project page:

Periodic Table of Elementals is my third book on Kickstarter and (by far) my largest book to date. It features unique elemental creatures inspired by every actual chemical element, with lore and abilities based on each element’s chemical properties!

What’s in the Periodic Table of Elementals?

• 118 fully illustrated unique elementals representing ALL chemical elements
• Abilities and mechanics based on real chemistry
• Familiars, steeds, and gargantuan summonable elementals
• Science-inspired lore for each elemental
• An actual, fully usable periodic table with all the elementals from the book
• Adventure hooks, optional rules, tables, synergies, and more tools
• More than 120 detailed illustrations, including art for each elemental, by me!

Sounds fantastic really.  I am not really into D&D 5e these days, but my issues are with WotC/Hasbro not with independent creatives like Catilus. There will be plenty to convert over to other systems should you want.

 This large opening leads to the grand burial chambers of the Vampire Queen herself. There is a flight of stairs going down, opening to a large chamber.

The chamber has five exits: two to the left, two to the right, and one ahead.  

Between the party and these exits are a hundred or so skeletons. 

This chamber has 6d20+10 skeletons that will rise up and attack.

 Well. I didn't expect to be doing this today. I just got word that my old High School and College DM, R. Michael Grenda, died yesterday.  The cause of death is unknown, but it is suspected it was a heart attack.

I have mentioned him here many times, usually not by name, I don't name people unless they have explicitly said it was fine. But we began playing in my early high school days. We met via our school's theatre group. Yeah, we were both theatre kids. We bonded over our shared love of D&D and the fact that we both owned TRS-80 Color Computers. 

He had his world, based mainly on the World of Greyhawk and I had mine, based on the Known World, or what would later be known as Mystara. And we would go back and forth between these worlds. Eventually, we would merge them and he made a map for it that I would eventually lose and then much, much later find the Mystoerth map I still use today. We played chess together often, had similar tastes in fiction, and discovered computer games together.

When I left town to go to University, he eventually followed me there. He was a computer science major and would eventually end up working with databases for the State of Illinois (which is as much archaeology as it is computer science) and met his future wife while we were all at school together. His wife (then his girlfriend) introduced me to Gopher sites and even this new thing called the World Wide Web.

Much of what happened in our games lives on in my work here.  The "Big Bad" of my Buffy campaign "The Dragon and the Phoenix" was Yoln Shadowreaper, one of his NPCs. The entire background of TDaTP was my big War of the Dragons, which was our world-ending battle before college.

Our "D&D on the Computer" game BARDD was largely written by him. When I6 Ravenloft came out I bought it and then made him run it. Back in college, we even did the "Dreams of Barovia" campaign where the characters shifted from one reality to the next, with him running House on Gryphon Hill and me running the original I6. I ran my first test of my witch class with him and we tried out his Riddle Master, Beastmaster, and Shadowmaster classes.

We had met up recently, back in July, and that was great. We had not seen each other in a long time. Family, jobs, kids. You know the story.  I hate to say it, but when his wife called me last night, I was not 100% surprised. I thought he looked a little unwell. But hell, we are all in our 50s now. None of us look "great."  

I have not quite processed it all yet, to be honest.  I owe a lot of my my current writing to him and the games we played. Thought we might roll some dice one more time, but I guess not.

I'll end with him flipping me off at a party a bunch of us were at in college. He would have found it funny.

 A secret door here is similar to the one in Room #18 to Room #19.  Finding that one makes finding this one easier; an extra 1 (on a d6), a +16% (d%), or +3 (on d20).

This room contains Treasure Types A, G, and H. There is also a sword +3 here. The sword and all the treasure here is cursed. Removing any of it from this room results in the possessor needing to make a saving throw vs. Magic or begin losing 1 point per turn to a random ability: d6 1=Strength, 2=Intelligence, 3=Wisdom, 4=Dexterity, 5=Constitution, 6=Charisma. To stop the drain the items must be returned to this room.  

Only magic can restore ability loss. 

Cover by Dean Morrissey

What’s new

• The Dungeon Masters Guide is out!
• New column – Up on a Soap Box
• Full board game – The Awful Green Things From Outer Space

The Dungeon Masters Guide

• Extensive Q&A with Gygax about the DMG
• It’s an attempt to give more structure to the game to avoid the craziness OD&D could lead to and allow campaigns to go longer without the players becoming too powerful too quickly (ha, rather different to 5e)
• He doesn’t envision there being a lot of supplements like OD&D – the 3 books will be sufficient – there may be a second edition but it will be a long time in the future
• And female dwarves have beards
• And a bunch of comments by a panel of people involved in its creation – mostly about which sections they like the most

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Gygax delves into the evil alignment, particularly what it means to be lawful vs chaotic or neutral

Articles

• The Politics of Hell – a half real-world mythological/half made-up account of the history of hell
• A Short Course in D&D – describes an experience of teaching D&D to 55 people and the logistics involved
• Six Guns and Sorcery – Allen Hammack gives a character conversion table between Boot Hill and AD&D, both from and to
• Fantasy Smith’s Notebook – a new column about miniatures – in this one reviewing various manufacturers

Up on a Soap Box

• Conventions: The manufacturer’s view – Gygax gives a good overview of the various costs vs profits an exhibitor can expect – basically it costs a lot but that’s the price of exposure

Variants

• Level Progression for Players and Dungeon Masters – a way of scoring yourself – x amount of XP for DMing a campaign, for having a character die etc and then being able to say something like I’m a level 4 DM and a level 7 player, one of those nice ideas that will never take off

Giants in the Earth

• Leigh Brackett’s Eric John Stark
• Lord Dunsany’s Welleran

Bazaar of the Bizarre

• Len Lakofka gives us Potions of Forgetfulness, Rings of Silence, Horn of Hadies, Chime of Warning, Book of a Magic User, Leomund’s Plate and Cup, and Apparatus of Spikey Owns (!?)

Dragon’s Bestiary

• Slinger

Out on a Limb letters

• Various rants about D&D that aren’t worth detailing

Cover by Thomas Canty – you can’t beat a knight on a horse!

What’s new

• New Dragon title logo! The logotype would essentially remain the same till #274, albeit with lots of variations including a change to a 3D style in #225
• At the start of volume IV, Kask takes a look back at what they’ve achieved with the Dragon and what plans they have – more Tom Wham games, contests, more colour, layout re-designs, etc

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Guest column by Bob Bledsaw from Judges Guild about what they’ve done to help D&D with all their playing aids

Articles

• Brief report by Gygax on Cangames ’79 – says it was great
• A quick look at Dwarves

Variants

• Elementals and Philosopher’s Stone – creates some sort of 18 sided thingy that adds more elements such as dry, cold, etc and the corresponding elementals
• Mythos of Africa – you know the drill

Giants in the Earth

• Alan Garner’s Durathor
• Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
• Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars

Bazaar of the Bizarre

• Gygax – Bag of Wind and variants

Dragon’s Bestiary

• The Horast

Out on a Limb letters

• Rebuttal to the harsh LOTR movie critique in #25

Ads of note

• Best of The Dragon – on sale at at GenCon XII (August) and shipped by mail Sep 1

This sure is an odd product. You can read a bit about the background here: https://2warpstoneptune.com/2013/11/25/the-story-of-troubador-press-an-interview-with-malcolm-whyte/

If that doesn’t work, try the archived version.

The book is initially a bit confusing. On each double page spread there are 3 sections – a full page illustration, and then a facing page with a top half that has a story that goes along with the illustration, and a bottom half that has rules for a dungeon game you can play by yourself. What is confusing and gradually becomes apparent is that the story and the game have absolutely nothing to do with each other!

The story has the party coming across all the biggest monsters in D&D, including Tiamat. The adventure has none of that.

The adventure is called, prosaically, “Adventure In The Dungeon”. There’s a map in the middle and some very basic rules about how to move and fight the monsters in each room. The connection to the AD&D rules is by the thinnest thread. There’s even a monster that doesn’t appear anywhere else – the Iron Skeletons of Grusyin.

Anyway, the story is fairly silly. A lot of it is taken up with descriptions of the monsters, mainly the colours of all their parts so that you know how to colour between the lines in the, shall we say, serviceable illustrations.

I guess the next attempt to capture the young market would be the D&D cartoon.

Date Information

Well on Goodreads, someone has put June. In the interview linked above, Malcolm Whyte mentions that shortly after it was published, James Dallas Egbert went missing, which was on August 15, 1979. So June and July are likely. I’ll happily go with June.

Cover by Roger MacGowan

What’s new

• New assistant editor Gary Jaquet. Joe Orlowski has moved on to TSR Hobbies as GenCon Co-ordinator from TSR Periodicals
• Reintroduction of Featured Creature as The Dragon’s Bestiary
• New Giants in the Earth column by Lawrence Schick
• New column Bazaar of the Bizarre – new magic items/spells etc

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Gygax talks history, saying the act of role playing (separate from specific rules) had been a part of wargaming for years before D&D, some history about the Lake Geneva Tactical Studies Association, the C&C Society, etc. Gygax’s sand table sounds awesome. And then finally the history on the publication of D&D and supplements. He then goes on to talk about how AD&D is a different game – whereas D&D is wild and woolly and can be used in all sorts of crazy loose ways, AD&D is meant to be much stricter and have more rulings about how things work, reducing grey areas. This will mean players can move from group to group more easily and tournament play can be more easily judged.

Articles

• Deck of Fate – basically using a Tarot deck as a Deck of Fate and the results that will happen to a PC for each card
• D&D Meets the Electronic Age by Rick Krebs who wrote Gangbusters – basically a description of his group using BASIC to do things like roll dice and determine hit success and even provide simple text adventure stuff like “You are standing in an east west corridor. Which way?”

Design Forum

• Putting together a party on the spur of the moment – Gygax discusses quickly creating a party, for example at a convention, and gives a bunch of tables to generate said party – unlike a lot of these random table articles, this one is actually good
• The Thief: A deadly annoyance – some suggestions for players of thieves to do more than just climb walls and pick pockets
• Hirelings Have Feelings Too – bunch of considerations to not treat hirelings as just dumb yes-men
• Notes from a Very Successful D&D Moderator – awful article by an awful puffed up DM who ends it all by wishing his players -8 on their saving throws – what a douche-bag

Variants

• Chinese Undead – various special vampires and such
• Another View of the Nine-Point Alignment Scheme – a table showing a bunch of things and the alignment’s approach to them – eg whether someone of that alignment would use poison
• Strength comparison table – extending the strength table down to 0 and up to 27

Giants in the Earth

• Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever, Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane, Talbot Mundy’s Tros of Samothrace

Bazaar of the Bizarre

• Overly detailed instructions on how to create a lich

Dragon’s Bestiary

• The Barghest

First cover by Phil Foglio!

What’s new

• Editorial notes that although the letters column has been revived, it’s already in serious doubt of continuing due to lack of submissions
• Not a lot of D&D in this one – lots of Gamma World and other stuff

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Gygax discusses why character generation in D&D doesn’t have random tables for social class – basically it will be highly dependent on the DM’s campaign – the setting, government etc, so it’s not sensible to have generic tables
• As an example campaign setting, the World of Greyhawk gets a mention – which wasn’t published till August 1980, one and a half years later
• He mentions that the DMG is practically finished! He thanks a bunch of people

Articles

• An article categorising orcish miniatures from various manufacturers
• Varieties of Vampires – a whole bunch of variations from the real world to spice up your campaign
• To Select a Mythos – some suggestions for creating your campaign setting

Out on a Limb letters

• Critique of the new (animated) Lord of the Rings movie – pretty harsh!

This was a 4 page promotional flier given to retailers.

More info and a screenshot can be found on The Acaeum.

I’m including this here for completeness even though I haven’t read it.

Date Information – Early 1979

I’m placing this in April for no particular reason.

Cover by Elrohir (Ken Rahman)

What’s new

• now combined with Little Wars again going forward
• Though only 48 pages, not 56, due to paper costs
• Out on a Limb letters column makes its debut
• Joe Orlowski leaving the mag to become convention director for TSR and Gary Jaquet replacing him

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Melee in D&D – a fairly lengthy but good and comprehensive article reiterating that D&D combat is not meant to be a realistic simulation but instead an abstraction that’s sufficient enough to make it somewhat realistic and also fun without getting bogged down. Gygax also notes that Jean Wells and Lawrence Shick have joined the TSR Design Department

Articles

• Featured Creature #2 – winners announced – low number of entries means they won’t run the competition again – 1st place to Robert Charrette and Erol Outs gets an honourable mention
• The Society for Creative Anachronism – Allen Hammack tells of his experiences (with photos) attending an SCA event – it’s not just about whacking other people with fake swords!

Design Forum

• Keeping the Magic-User in his Place – DM advice of ways to nerf magic-users if they’re too powerful
• In Defense of Extraordinary Characters – a rebuttal against the odd criticism that high level characters are unrealistic – they’re called games people!

Variants

• Chinese dragons – alters and expands what’s given in Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes
• Another look at Lycanthropy – a bunch of extra rules – if you like that kind of thing
• Narcisstics – another one of those really bad humourous monster things
• Psionics Revisited – ugh – when will it ever end?! – this is a bunch of new powers as far as I can tell
• Disease – random charts for duration and symptoms
• The Ramifications of Alignment – an attempt to add extra delineations within the alignments and descriptions of gods that would be appropriate for these – eg Law is further split into things like Harmony, Justice, Knowledge, War, etc

Out on a Limb letters

• Several criticisms of various articles and a bit of defensiveness on the part of the editor in response

Cover potentially done by DCS according to this.

What’s new

• Back to 32 pages as the last standalone Dragon magazine not combined with Little Wars
• Not a lot in this issue due to large page count given to fiction

Sorcerer’s Scroll

• Gygax – random tables for generating lower plane creatures – as indicated, this was included almost verbatim as Appendix D in the DMG, although the article version has some drawings

Articles

• Editorial about conventions, particularly Origins and how it seems a bit of a mess in terms of how it’s administered
• A short article by Gygax about the growth of RPGs at the Annual Hobby Industry Convention and Trade Show
• Notes on the weight of armor – it’s not as heavy as you may think in real life
• Damage Permanency – random tables for damage to create permanent impairments to characters – with an editor’s note that this should not be used in D&D!
• Dungeons & Prisons – a short article suggesting how a DM can use prisons to get rid of high level characters

Variants

• Mind wrestling – a kind of board game marker thingy variant for handling psionics

The image in the bottom left is by Steve Swenston. Otherwise the cover is a complete mess.

What’s new

• Now 56 pages! Because…
• They’ve combined The Dragon and Little Wars into one magazine
• Sneak peek at the DMs Guide! – editorial notes it’s coming out in August at Gencon

Articles

• The First Assassins – real historical stuff
• Bad to Worse – Gygax reviews some amateur magazines – he completely ridicules them – maybe deserved but this kind of thing is so small minded and petty and not worthy of inclusion in the Dragon
• And another comment by Gygax on a review of the Players Handbook in Strategy & Tactics – sigh – get over yourself Gary!
• International DM Search – a massive list of DMs and campaigns
• D&D – what it is and where it’s going – first in an ongoing series – finally a decent article – has interesting data about printing numbers of early D&D – talks about putting out the simplified Basic Set and mentions that newer sets will have a module instead of geomorphs. Funnily, he says he’s not interested in always coming out with new and improved editions every so often and considers AD&D will be somewhat done and final with maybe small alterations here and there. New material will come in the forms of modules etc. Also speculates that there will be computerised D&D in the future.
• First Invitational AD&D Masters Tournament results – using a scenario called “The Quest for the Holy Grrale” (sic) which they say will be published by TSR – though as far as I can tell, they never did. A who’s who of players
• DM’s Guide sneak peek – descriptions of magic items from the G&D modules, attack matrices, assassin, saving throw and psionic tables
• The Nomenclature of Pole Arms – by Gygax – this was surprisingly readable and interesting!

Ads of note

• Ad for B1 – In Search of the Unknown!

Cover by Paul Jaquays – bit sketchy but pretty decent

What’s new

• An adventure! – The Hall of Mystery by Don Turnbull – I actually don’t think it’s all that great
• There’s an error on the cover. It says Vol III No 6 but it’s actually No 7

Articles

• The Other Humorous Side of D&D – an anecdote from a player about a really bad/ridiculous DM
• A bunch of tables to come up with fancy titles for characters like “The Captain General, His All Triumphant Magnificance, The Duke Rogor, The Colossal, Destroyer of Evil”
• Monty Strikes Back – just doesn’t interest me
• Although not D&D related, it’s worth mentioning there’s an extensive article about “Rail Baron” by Gary Gygax

Design Forum

• An article suggesting you spice up your monsters by just picking a real world creature and fancying it up – eg giant scorpion
• An article that’s basically a rogues gallery of NPCs with interesting descriptions and motivations to add flavour to your campaign

Variants

• Inflation in D&D – characters got too much gold? Just inflate the prices of things! Whatever floats your boat I guess
• How To Counter Foretelling Spells – DM tricks to deal with powerful characters
• Sensible Sorcery – how to put some limits on spell research

Reviews

• The Silmarillion! The reviewer, T Watson, is fairly enthusiastic but with notes of caution about how dense it is.

Ads of Note

• Ad for S1 Tomb of Horrors!

 You know how I have lamented how I never have found the perfect sci-fi RPG?  Well. That all might be changing.

Thirteen Parsecs

https://tinyurl.com/13psignup

Thirteen Parsecs: Adventures Beyond the Solar Frontier is the latest tabletop role-playing game project from Elf Lair Games, producers of Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and Wasted Lands: The Dreaming Age. It forms the third of our trilogy of core games - we've given you modern and fantasy, and now we bring sci-fi to the forefront with the same rules, completely customizable and ready for you to build exactly the type of science fiction gaming you want. As always, it's your game your way when it's Powered by O.G.R.E.S.!

I am so excited for this.  I have been dying to work on a solid sci-fi game since forever.

A bit of background, I think I have mentioned in the past that prior to switching gears to become a psychologist I had actually started out in physics, and astrophysics in particular. I got to a point in calculus where I just stopped understanding it, so I had to switch. BTW this makes my former Actuary (with degrees in math) wife laugh her ass off all the time. 

So it will be wonderful to put all this knowledge I have about astronomy, space, and science to good use.

Launch is not till later in the year, but Jason is already working out all sorts of great things. I hope to resurrect Space Truckers, get some more mileage out of Dark Star (formerly BlackStar), and more.

So please sign up and watch for more details!

 On the other side of Room 12-17 from Room 18 is another set of stairs to an ornate tomb.  This one belongs to the Vampire Queen's Majordomo, the Dwarf Fizko.

Fizko was in charge of the household of the Vampire Queen. She rewarded his faithful service by turning him into a Death Knight.

Death Knight

Armor Class -1 [20]
Hit Dice 12+36 (90hp)*****
Attacks 2 × weapons (1d10+4) + Special
THAC0 6 [+13]
Movement 120’ (40’)
Morale 12
Alignment Chaos
XP 5,900
Number Appearing 1 (1)
Treasure Type None

The Dwarf Fizko is a supernaturally strong Death Knight.

He attacks with a great mattock +3 that he can use to hit twice per round.  He can summon 2d6 Haugbui twice per day.

As a death knight, he has the powers and spells of a 12th level anti-Paladin.  His "lay on hands" ability causes damage instead of healing.

Fizko is fanatically loyal to the Vampire Queen, whom he believes is a Goddess and he swore his oath to her.

 A secret door in Room 18 leads to a secret treasure room.

This room contains Treasure Types A, G, and H. Additionally there is a suit of elven chain, and a sword +3 vs. Magic-users (Wizards and Witches).