Editorial – after vociferous emails, they agree to reduce the amount of fiction – hooray! Hey look – a table of contents for the first time. Oh my – a very politically incorrect article about women characters in D&D, where charisma is exchanged for beauty. Perhaps the less said about this, the better. An article …
Author Archives: nev
The Strategic Preview 6
Mentions GenCon IX as being in the past. Talks a bit about Swords & Spells (available now). Article list and screenshot of 1st and last page available on RPG Geek. Date Information Hawk and Moor says August. The Acaeum says September. Considering GenCon was held Aug 20-22nd, and SP6 mentions GenCon being in the past, …
Swords & Spells
I was kind of dreading this book a bit, expecting a lot of tedious miniatures rules that I’d mostly skip. However, even though there were some very dry bits, it turned out to be quite a quick read (unlike Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes). Probably the most interesting parts of these older books are the Forewords …
The Dragon #2 Vol 1.2
Ad for Gencon coming up August 20. Funny part in the editorial about how some thought fantasy gaming would be a fad. There’s an article about monkish combat (in order to level up) that made me think of the Apple II game Karateka because of the attacking – kick high, middle, low – and there …
The Strategic Preview #5
Mentions Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes: Supplement IV is available. That’s about it. Note, you can also see the back page on rpggeek. Date Information The Acaeum says July. Makes sense given the announcement of Supplement 4. And the comic saying they’re off to Origins II, which was held July 23-25. And an ad for Gencon …
Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes: Supplement IV
What it says on the cover. Kind of like the Monster Manual but not as much info. The foreword is interesting, saying that this is the last supplement and don’t hold your breath for another. It’s like D&D is “done” and there’ll only be minor new stuff in Dragon magazine. And a funny note about …
Palace of the Vampire Queen
Dungeon Masters Kit – Number 1 The first ever published D&D module! It’s here because it was distributed by TSR. This is quite an impressive adventure considering there were basically no other examples to get ideas from (apart from the minimal and weird example in the D&D rulebooks). It’s quite amazing how polished the whole …
The Dragon #1 Vol 1.1
General introductions on the magazine and how it’s no longer the house organ like the Strategic Review. Article with a complicated system of using non prime requisites to determine chances of success at almost anything. An early attempt at what we now know in 5e as a DC check. Article about magic and science in …
The Strategic Preview #4
Mentions Dave Sutherland (DCS III), Rob Kuntz and Ernie Gygax have joined TSR. Date Information Acaeum says June. No reason to doubt it. Unclear whether this came out before or after the first Dragon issue. Not really that important.
The Strategic Preview #3
What’s this you say? These were some in-house newsletters. Although the cover of the first one (yes, even though it’s #3) seems to imply they were going to be sent to subscribers of The Dragon. Anyway, I’ve never read any of these in their entirety – only what’s available from the scans on The Acaeum. …