The Dragon Retrospective

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » October 5th, 2025, 13:07

I'm using the digitized versions of the magazines from the official TSR Dragon Magazine Archive 5 Disc CD ROM. These are high quality scans, and I guess it provides a reasonable enough cutoff date. I don't know how frequently I'll do these, but I'd like to finish it at all someday.
I won't be reading the stories unless there's a good reason to, primarily reading this for the RPG material and any interesting historical tidbits.

Issue #1

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » October 5th, 2025, 13:43

The Dragon, Issue #1

(Poor text color choice!)

You got me, I skipped over The Strategic Review. I actually skimmed it and found it quite bare, maybe I'll do it as its own separate thing someday.

Right off the bat they open with an article penned Fritz Leiber, and wow what an incredibly strong way to start your magazine. It's advertising his upcoming gamer Lankmar[sic?]. I have not played it. I've also not read any of Leiber's works, I know of him through the strong praise he receives from respected figures such as Gygax.
You can read more about the game here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lankhmar_(board_game)

In The Cauldron is a column dedicated to discussing non-TSR games. That's a good idea for an in-house magazine, you should constantly be sizing up your competition. But there does not seem to be any content this issue, I'll check back next time.

Followed by a set of rule modifications for the Chainmail rules to make them suitable for The Battle of Five Armies. Gygax may not have liked it, but Tolkien was and remains the king of fantasy. I suspect this may have taken up far too much space as I realized it continued later into the magazine for many more pages.

HOW TO USE NON-PRIME-REQUISITE CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES
An article detailing action resolution, no skill system is suggested but I'm impressed at how much is being discussed by 1976. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons wasn't even published yet. Modifiers for specialists e.g., thieves are better at lockpicking. Good stuff.

Article by James Ward about explaining magic using science. I don't like explaining magic away as science, it stops being magic to me. I will say that he is close to creating a new Artificer class here which is interesting, he deems them an Artificer race. Definitely not enough here to make a class unto itself, but the groundwork is there. Segment is split between two pages across the book, sloppy editing.

Languages, this article doesn't really say much at all or introduce any ideas.

One of the mainstays of D&D monsters makes its first(?) appearance

Did you know it was based upon a pack of cheap plastic Hong Kong toys that Gary bought? Read more here: https://www.drunkardsanddragons.com/blo ... i-say-more

An article for DMs explaining how to create your own overland(wilderness) hexmap.

When drawing your map, first sketch in major terrain features. Rivers, mountain ranges, large lakes, seas, oceans, and so forth. Fill in the empty areas with smaller types of terrain, then begin placing your large cities, ports and capitals, and work your way down to the hamlets. Now finish off the map with your road network.

Sensible advice.

MIGHTY MAGIC MISCELLANY, illusionist spells. Very few new spells, just telling you what spells to give from MU to illusionist, meh. Spells of note: Color Spray, Blur, Phantasmal Killer, True Sight. Staples of the Wizard spellbook to this day, as far as I know.

Apparently it wasn't enough to get Fritz Leiber, there's also an article written by Lin Carter. Huh. It's related to some Hyborean wargame, bit odd and specific.

Gygax penned an article about rule additions to the game DUNGEON!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon!
I know nothing of the game, so, no comment. From a reading it seems perhaps based upon a simplified version of D&D rules.

There's a story here(I won't be reviewing), of note it uses a world called Oerth, which Gygax later uses for Greyhawk. Ho hum. Decided to look it up, and the author "Garrison Ernst" is in fact Gary Gygax. Gotcha!
Apparently this was part of a bigger novel, there seems to be some blog posts about it being a 'lost' novel. Don't know much about it if anyone wants to go digging.

Summary:
Wargames still remained very strong, lots of articles & product space for them. I suspect this is partially because of miniatures.
It was… fine. Not enough about D&D for my tastes. Still far too early to discuss other RPGs. Strong writer lineup.

Post by **Rand** » October 6th, 2025, 21:17

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ October 5th, 2025, 13:43
Article by James Ward about explaining magic using science.

James Ward was more of the Dave Arneson camp, and they both loved to mix the fantastic of sword & sorcery with the fantastic of pulp SF (that culminated with original Star Trek goofiness) only not in the Star Wars way that Lucas did.
He went on to write Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, both of which lean heavily into what often was basically innate magic manifested as "mutations".

Post by **TKVNC** » October 6th, 2025, 22:40

rusty_shackleford wrote: ↑ October 5th, 2025, 13:43
The Dragon, Issue #1

(Poor text color choice!)

You got me, I skipped over The Strategic Review. I actually skimmed it and found it quite bare, maybe I'll do it as its own separate thing someday.
Right off the bat they open with an article penned Fritz Leiber, and wow what an incredibly strong way to start your magazine. It's advertising his upcoming gamer Lankmar[sic?]. I have not played it. I've also not read any of Leiber's works, I know of him through the strong praise he receives from respected figures such as Gygax.
You can read more about the game here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lankhmar_(board_game)
In The Cauldron is a column dedicated to discussing non-TSR games. That's a good idea for an in-house magazine, you should constantly be sizing up your competition. But there does not seem to be any content this issue, I'll check back next time.
Followed by a set of rule modifications for the Chainmail rules to make them suitable for The Battle of Five Armies. Gygax may not have liked it, but Tolkien was and remains the king of fantasy. I suspect this may have taken up far too much space as I realized it continued later into the magazine for many more pages.
HOW TO USE NON-PRIME-REQUISITE CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES
An article detailing action resolution, no skill system is suggested but I'm impressed at how much is being discussed by 1976. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons wasn't even published yet. Modifiers for specialists e.g., thieves are better at lockpicking. Good stuff.
Article by James Ward about explaining magic using science. I don't like explaining magic away as science, it stops being magic to me. I will say that he is close to creating a new Artificer class here which is interesting, he deems them an Artificer race. Definitely not enough here to make a class unto itself, but the groundwork is there. Segment is split between two pages across the book, sloppy editing.
Languages, this article doesn't really say much at all or introduce any ideas.
One of the mainstays of D&D monsters makes its first(?) appearance

Did you know it was based upon a pack of cheap plastic Hong Kong toys that Gary bought? Read more here: https://www.drunkardsanddragons.com/blo ... i-say-more

An article for DMs explaining how to create your own overland(wilderness) hexmap.
When drawing your map, first sketch in major terrain features. Rivers, mountain ranges, large lakes, seas, oceans, and so forth. Fill in the empty areas with smaller types of terrain, then begin placing your large cities, ports and capitals, and work your way down to the hamlets. Now finish off the map with your road network.
Sensible advice.
MIGHTY MAGIC MISCELLANY, illusionist spells. Very few new spells, just telling you what spells to give from MU to illusionist, meh. Spells of note: Color Spray, Blur, Phantasmal Killer, True Sight. Staples of the Wizard spellbook to this day, as far as I know.
Apparently it wasn't enough to get Fritz Leiber, there's also an article written by Lin Carter. Huh. It's related to some Hyborean wargame, bit odd and specific.
Gygax penned an article about rule additions to the game DUNGEON!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon!
I know nothing of the game, so, no comment. From a reading it seems perhaps based upon a simplified version of D&D rules.
There's a story here(I won't be reviewing), of note it uses a world called Oerth, which Gygax later uses for Greyhawk. Ho hum. Decided to look it up, and the author "Garrison Ernst" is in fact Gary Gygax. Gotcha!
Apparently this was part of a bigger novel, there seems to be some blog posts about it being a 'lost' novel. Don't know much about it if anyone wants to go digging.

Summary:
Wargames still remained very strong, lots of articles & product space for them. I suspect this is partially because of miniatures.
It was… fine. Not enough about D&D for my tastes. Still far too early to discuss other RPGs. Strong writer lineup.

The cheap toy part is absolute SOVL