Oh my, psionics… I never understood them. And I still don’t after reading this. I play a lot of board games and there’s an art to laying out the rules of a game. Often I find a game that seems difficult but turns out to be quite easy and comparable to other board games – …
Author Archives: nev
The Strategic Review #2.2
The last issue. Discussion of what The Dragon will be. Dave Sutherland joining as staff. Discussion of the magic system in D&D by Gygax. Talks about the components – verbal, somatic, material. Clears up misconceptions – some players had been using spells endlessly without re-memorising. More ridiculous posturing about Gencon vs Origins. A full page …
The Strategic Review #2.1
Dave Arneson has now joined TSR and Mike Carr too. Major article about alignment by Gygax. He shows a 2d plane with law and chaos on one axis and good and evil on another. He doesn’t quite go the whole hog of 9 alignments but rather only 5: Four quadrants with all combinations of lawful/chaotic-good/evil …
The Strategic Review #1.5
Blackmoor with the printers… A mention of Supplement 3 – Gods, Demi-Gods and Heroes coming soon. Some background bios on TSR people – Gygax, Blume, Rob and Theron Kuntz, Kask. Some info about Gencon vs Origins. A couple of magic items and new monsters – Rakshasa, the Trapper. That’s about it. Date Information Well it …
Blackmoor: Supplement II
Laid out like the Original D&D booklets into 3 sections. First up we get two new subclasses – the monk and assassin. Oddly, the monk is a subclass of cleric but has no spells – it seems more a subclass of thief. Oh my. There’s a very extensive section on hit location – assigning various …
The Strategic Review #1.4
Announcement of 3 new people joining staff – Tim Kask, Terry Kuntz, Dave Arneson. Oh look, more info on pole arms… Worth mentioning, in each of these issues there’s a section called Mapping the Dungeons where they mention various newsletters that contain D&D content and also a list of dungeon masters available. New magic user …
The Character Archaic
Unfortunately I haven’t read this in its entirety. I haven’t got a copy and I haven’t been able to find a pdf to either buy or download from anywhere on the net. What I have been able to see from various google searches are images of the cover, the character sheets and even a sideways …
The Strategic Review #1.3
A bit of a polemic in this one against a competing newsletter that published a bad review of D&D. This kind of negativity crops ups somewhat often in these early magazines and it’s not an attractive thing. Also of note is that Gary Gygax is now full time at TSR. There’s a curious announcement of …
The Strategic Review #1.2
In D&D related content: they say the first D&D supplement, Greyhawk, should be available around the time the issue is published we get a FAQ with an example of combat using the new system in Greyhawk (with damage by weapon-type). Of interest to me, it’s stated that initiative is checked for every round! new monster …
Greyhawk: Supplement I
Greyhawk expands in interesting ways on the Original D&D. Most notably it introduces the Thief with all of that classes abilities. Also Paladins are added as a sub-class of Fighter. Races get a bit more of a description and half-elves are introduced. Next up are modifiers for Ability scores. For Strength – to hit and …