The Articles of Dragon: "Aesirhamar"

Over the years I've written this blog, I don't think I've devoted much space to the adventures that have appeared in the pages of Dragon. I'm not quite sure why that is. In retrospect, it seems to me that this would be an obvious source of commentary, particularly as I often made use of these scenarios in whole or in part. Perhaps one day I'll go back and correct this omission in a more systematic way. Today, though, I want to focus on a single specific Dragon magazine adventure that I think is genuinely worthy of attention – for a couple of reasons.

Roger E. Moore's "Aesirhamar" appeared in issue #90 (October 1984) and is a companion piece to "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" from the same issue. I'd actually go farther and say that "Aesirhamar" is just as important as the article it accompanies, because it shows how the information in the article is supposed to be used in play. I think that's important in this case. As I stated in my earlier post, "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" is rather dull, focusing primarily on the way that the normal rules of AD&D must be modified to account for the home of the Norse gods. The result is, in my opinion, quite tedious rather than exciting, which is why I never regarded "Plane Facts on Gladsheim" as highly as I did Moore's "The Astral Plane."

With the addition of "Aesirhamar," though, Moore's approach in the accompanying article makes more sense. Now that the Dungeon Master has a scenario set on Gladsheim, he has the opportunity to make use of all those rules changes and exceptions that Moore has laid out. Rather than being abstract ideas, they're very important, tied to an adventure in which high-level characters journey to Jotunheim and must contend not only with its hostile inhabitants but also with the way magic and other abilities are warped by the very nature of this Outer Plane. 

Like a lot of older AD&D adventures, "Aesirhamar" doesn't really have a plot. Instead, it presents a situation and several locales connected to that situation through which the characters journey. In brief, the characters are summoned by some of the Aesir of the Norse pantheon to locate and stop an evil dwarf who is in league with the giant Hargnar Left-Hand. The dwarf is in possession of a mighty magical weapon, the titular Aesirhamar, which was forged in order to kill the gods in revenge of Thor's killing of Hargnar's brothers. It's a pretty straightforward situation, one that's easy to understand and appropriately Norse in its focus.

For the most part, the adventure consists of a series of keyed encounters in Jotunheim while the characters travel there in search of the hammer. Given the nature of the place, these encounters are quite challenging – there are lots of giants here, as well as associated creatures, like trolls – and each one of them will likely test the mettle of the characters. Moore doesn't include any maps of these encounters. Instead, the DM is left to his own devices, tailoring them to his own tastes. This approach was pretty typical of the era in which "Aesirhamar" was published and I don't mean that as a criticism. There was an understanding in those days that the referee could easily whip up his own maps if they were needed.

Of course, the real meat of the adventure is not these encounters per se, challenging though they are, but the overall context in which they occur. The characters are acting as agents of the Norse gods, charged with defeating (or at least neutralizing) a threat to their rule. That's a pretty compelling adventure hook and one I remember being quite effective in my own campaign. One of the player characters, Morgan Just, was an admirer (though not worshiper) of Thor and considered it a great honor to have been chosen to aid him against the giants, whom he already hated. His fellow player characters, though, were a lot more venal, and saw the recovery of Aesirhamar as an opportunity to gain, if not the upper hand, at least some mighty rewards for the gods. Needless to say, this difference of opinion led to some interesting conflicts that helped spur on subsequent adventures.

Ultimately, that's why I have an affection for "Aesirhamar" – it provided me with what I needed to kick off some fun, Norse-inspired AD&D mayhem. It also provided an opportunity for me to make use of "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," which was a plus. In combination, that was enough. Whether that makes "Aesirhamar" good in some objective sense, I can't say. For my friends and I, that was enough.

The Articles of Dragon: "Plane Facts on Gladsheim"

Judging by the fact that this is the third post in a row about Dragon issue #90 (October 1984), I think it’s safe to say it was a good one. The funny thing is, before rereading it for these posts, I don’t think I’d have singled it out as anything special. I have a pretty good visual memory, especially for the covers of books and magazines I read as a kid or teenager, and recalling a cover usually brings the contents rushing back. I certainly remembered the cover of issue #90, but, until I revisited it, I doubt I could have told you much about what was inside, let alone why it might be worth talking about all these years later. Go figure!

In the case of the other two articles from this issue I've already discussed, that makes some sense. However, in the case of Roger E. Moore's "Plane Facts on Gladsheim," I'm a bit surprised. I was always a huge fan of Moore's articles, many of which are among the best ever to appear in the pages of Dragon. Likewise, I was fascinated by AD&D's planar cosmology from the moment I first saw it in Appendix IV of the Players Handbook. I wanted to know more about all these strange otherworlds that Gary Gygax mentioned there. Consequently, Moore's article on the Astral Plane was like catnip to me. Even now, I'd easily list it as one of my Top 10 Favorite Articles – probably even Top 5. 

That's why I'm surprised I didn't remember that issue #90 included Moore's attempt to do for Gladsheim what he had done earlier for the Astral Plane. Rereading it, though, I begin to remember why. But before I get to that, I'd like to talk briefly about the article itself. At over a dozen pages in length, there can be no question that Moore has been thorough in describing the realm of the Norse gods and other "chaotic good neutrals," to use Gygax's gloriously baroque terminology. He presents the overall "geography" of the plane, with its various realms associated with gods, giants, and other beings, as well as how they relate to one another. It's useful stuff but, if you're already well versed in Norse mythology, none of it is new information.

What is new are his notes on how various AD&D spells and magic items operate on Gladsheim. Indeed, the bulk of the article is taken up by these notes, as Moore describes a wide range of changes, tweaks, and restrictions in how these things work here. On the one hand, this is very much to be expected. Starting with Queen of the Demonweb Pits, AD&D largely took a game mechanical approach to describing the planes. The planes were places where the rules of the game worked differently than they did on the Prime Material Plane of your home campaign setting. That is what set them apart (along with some new random encounter charts). Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with that approach and I think, in the case of both Lolth's layer of the Abyss and the Astral Plane, it works reasonably well. In the case of Gladsheim, though, I don't think it does – or at least, it's not enough to do so.

For me, the problem – then and now – is that Gladsheim is boring. As described, it's a realm that's not too dissimilar to most vanilla fantasy worlds. That's not Gladsheim's fault really; it's more a consequence of the fact that Norse mythology is so rich with cool monsters and magic and gods and so forth that fantasy writers, including the writers of Dungeons & Dragons, have been looting them for decades. Unlike, say, the bizarre void of the Astral Plane or the malevolent chaos of the Abyss, Gladsheim is just like northern Europe – which is what a lot of fantasy settings are already like. What really sets it apart?

Moreover, as a realm populated by lots of gods who are worshiped on the Prime Material Plane, the scope of what characters can do in Gladsheim is necessarily limited. Cause too much mayhem and they'll draw the attention of Odin or Thor and that's not likely to end well for them. I get the sense that Moore might have recognized this on some level, because he also wrote an accompanying adventure, "Aesirhamar," that's set on Gladsheim as an example of the kinds of things he expected characters could do here. I appreciate that, even if I'm not convinced his answer is an especially good one. However, I'll save my comments about the adventure till next week, because I think it's worthy of a separate post. For now, I'll simply say that I can now see why Planescape opted for such a strange and idiosyncratic approach to the planes. Like it or hate, at least it's different.

The Articles of Dragon: "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming"

As I explained last week, the Ares Section of Dragon was an absolute favorite of mine during the period when I subscribed to the magazine. Consequently, many of the articles I remember most vividly from those years appeared within it. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, since science fiction is my true love and, until the advent of the Ares Section, sci-fi articles in Dragon were comparatively rare. Now, I had several of them every month and I couldn't have been happier.

Issue #85 (May 1984) contained a good example of the kind of article that stuck with me for years afterward. Entitled "Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming," it was written by Roger E. Moore. Though only two full pages long, it packs a lot of great ideas and advice into it. Moore's premise is that it's easy, after years of playing Traveller, to start seeing the universe it depicts solely through the lens of its world generation tables. For seasoned players, the shorthand of the Universal World Profile (UWP) is both strangely comforting and something of a straitjacket. 

That's why Moore issued a friendly but firm warning in this article to veteran referees and players alike: don’t let those numbers lull you into a false sense of understanding. The UWP might provide a useful framework, but the real work of building compelling science fiction locales lies in what you do with that framework. In fact, he argues, the surface-level rigidity of Traveller’s world generation system presents a terrific springboard for the imagination, if you’re willing to embrace ambiguity, interpretation, and the joys of contradiction.

The article is thus something of a manifesto for imaginative refereeing. Moore gleefully dismantles the idea that a world with a size code of 0 must be "just an asteroid colony," instead proposing alternate interpretations. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s a massive orbital station or a rogue moon or even a city-sized relic orbiting a dead star. A tainted atmosphere might not just mean smog; it could signal hallucinogenic pollen, post-volcanic ash clouds, or trace gases that cause skin to fluoresce. Hydrographics might imply steaming oceans or acidic lakes or frozen continents skated across by iceships. His point is not to throw away the UWP, but to complicate it and to turn it into a prompt rather than a constraint.

What Moore suggests here is, of course, accepted wisdom among longtime Traveller referees nowadays, but, at the time, I don't recall its being so. Consequently, I found the article almost revelatory in the clever way it reminded the reader that the numbers of the UWP are just the beginning. The real act of world building comes from asking, “What else could this mean?” A participatory democracy on a low-tech world? Maybe it’s a direct voting system controlled by a sentient AI with its own motives. A law level of 9? That could mean total disarmament – or an arms-free society hiding behind widespread telepathic enforcement or ritualized violence. The possibilities are endless.

Perhaps Moore’s greatest gift in the article is his encouragement to take nothing for granted. He delights in the idea that official UWP data could be wrong, misleading, or faked. He points out that tech level is a poor predictor of what’s available, let alone what’s culturally important. He reminds us that a government can call itself one thing and behave like another. He also notes that rapid change, chaos, and revolution are just as true to a science fiction setting as any neat planetary entry in a subsector catalog.

What I found especially useful when I read the article forty(!) years ago is that Moore doesn’t reject the UWP system or advocate abandoning this distinctive aspect of Traveller. Rather, he shows how to deepen and expand it. His is not a call for gonzo chaos or narrative fiat, but for interpretive richness and contextual layering. This is particularly useful in slower-paced campaigns, where the referee has time to imbue each world with history, nuance, and surprise. A jump-2 merchant route then becomes a journey through half a dozen genuinely unique cultures, each shaped as much by what's not revealed by the UWP as by what is.

What makes “Preventing Complacency in Traveller Gaming” still worth reading decades after its publication is not just the soundness of Moore’s advice, but the spirit in which it’s offered. As he so often is, Moore is playful, generous, and imaginative. He invites Traveller referees to breathe life into the game by treating each world as an adventure waiting to be discovered rather than a string of stats to be decoded. As a teenaged fan of Traveller, Moore’s article gave me permission to push beyond the rules as written and encouraged me to make the Traveller universe feel as strange as I could imagine it to be. This why this article has stayed with me all these years and why it still deserves to be remembered.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Special Skills, Special Thrills"

Of all the iconic classes of D&D, the cleric is the one that sticks out like a sore thumb. Whereas the fighting man, the magic-user, and even the thief are all pretty broad archetypes easily -- and non-mechanically -- re-imagined in a variety of different ways, the cleric is a very specific type of character. With his heavy armor, non-edged weapons, Biblical magic, and power over the undead, the cleric is not a generic class, recalling a crusading knight by way of Van Helsing. There's thus a distinctly Christian air to the cleric class, an air that increasingly seemed at odds with the game itself, which, as time went on, distanced itself from its earlier implicit Christianity and embraced an ahistorical form of polytheism instead.

For that reason, there were growing cries among some gamers to "fix" the cleric. In this context "fix" means change to make it less tied to a particular religion, in this case a particular religion the game itself had eschewed. The first time I recall seeing an "official" answer to these cries was in Deities & Demigods, where it's noted that the clerics of certain deities had different armor and/or weapon restrictions than "standard" clerics. A few even got special abilities reflective of their divine patron. This idea was later expanded upon by Gary Gygax himself in his "Deities & Demigods of The World of Greyhawk" series of articles, which I credit with giving widespread attention to this idea. I know that, after those articles appeared, lots of my fellow gamers wanted to follow Gary's lead and tailor their cleric characters to the deities they served, an idea that AD&D more formally adopted with 2e in 1989.

In issue #85 (May 1984) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore wrote an article entitled "Special Skills, Special Thrills" that also addressed this topic. Moore specifically cites Gary's articles as his inspiration and sets about providing unique abilities for clerics of several major pantheons. These pantheons are Egyptian, Elven, Norse, Ogrish, and Orcish – a rather strange mix! Of course, Moore intends these to be used only as examples to inspire individual referees. Likewise, he leaves open the question of just how to balance these additional abilities with a cleric's default ones. He notes that Gygax assessed a 5-15% XP penalty to such clerics, but does not wholeheartedly endorse that method himself, suggesting that other more roleplaying-oriented solutions (ritual demands, quests, etc.) might work just as well.

Like a lot of gamers at the time, I was very enamored of the idea of granting unique abilities to clerics based on their patron deity. Nowadays, I'm not so keen on the idea, in part because I think the desire for such only underlines the "odd man out" quality of the cleric class. Moreover, nearly every example of a "specialty cleric" (or priest, as D&D II called them) still retains too much of the baseline cleric to be coherent. Why, for example, would a god of war be able to turn the undead? Why should almost any cleric wear heavy armor and be the second-best combatant of all the classes? The cleric class, even with tweaks, is so tied to a medieval Christian society and worldview that it seems bizarre to me to use it as the basis for a "generic" priest class. Far better, I think, would be to have individual classes for priests of each religion or, in keeping with swords-and-sorcery, jettison the class entirely.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "How to Finish Fights Faster"

Along with falling damage, psionics, and alignment, articles about unarmed combat were a commonplace in the pages of Dragon during the years when I subscribed to that venerable gaming magazine. There's probably a reason for that: unarmed combat in AD&D was, in my experience, pretty much universally admitted to be unusable as written, a fact even Gary Gygax acknowledged on more than one occasion. Despite that, no single alternative system ever really took root, with most referees employing a welter of different approaches, some based on the official system, some based on earlier articles from Dragon, and some created whole cloth. That's what playing D&D was like during my formative years in the hobby -- a crazy mix of stuff all drawing inspiration from the same base and then running off in whatever direction one deemed most fun. Consequently, I can't help but chuckle at all the folks decrying the existence of "so many retro-clones," since, to my way of thinking, what we have now is pretty much what we've always had. The only difference is that, nowadays, it's easy to print up, prettify, and sell your interpretation of D&D to others, whereas, in the past, each referee had a photocopies and stapled collection of house rules he shared with anyone willing to listen.

Perhaps because no single alternative to AD&D's execrable rules emerged, it was inevitable that the redoubtable Roger E. Moore would eventually offer his own unarmed combat system. His article, "How to Finish Fights Faster," appeared in issue #83 (March 1984) and takes up only four pages, one of them being a humorous illustration of four rotund halflings attempting to bring down an eyepatch-wearing humanoid, who looks more annoyed than inconvenienced by his diminutive opponents. Moore divides unarmed combat up into three modes: pummeling, kicking, and grappling. Pummeling is straight up fisticuffs, with or without the use of aids, like dagger pommels or metal gauntlets. Kicking is, well, kicking and grappling is attacking to subdue. All three modes are fairly simple to use, working more or less like the normal AD&D combat system but with certain modifiers and special cases unique to them. This is particularly true of grappling, which has a number of different moves detailed, each of which has further modifiers and effects.

I never used Moore's system, so I can't comment on how well it plays in practice. I suspect it probably works better than AD&D's official system, but not as well as others. I say that, because it includes a lot of specificity in certain areas (grappling, for example) that necessitates either a good memory or referring to the article to adjudicate. That's not a bad thing in itself; there are lots of rules in D&D that require reference to a rulebook to handle. However, I'll admit that I find it baffling that unarmed combat rules so often wind up being much more complicated than armed combat. Why is it that we can accept that all it takes to adjudicate an armored fighting man's attack against an opponent is a 1D20 roll compared to a chart, followed by a damage roll if successful but we demand saving throws and percentage chances and so forth if he wants to throw a punch or wrestle someone to the ground?

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "Charting the Classes"

One of the characteristics of what I call the Silver Age of D&D is an obsession with mathematics, using it for a wide variety of purposes, from determining the best way to model falling damage to proving if one's dice "be ill-wrought." In issue #69 (January 1983) of Dragon, Roger E. Moore offered up yet another new field for mathematical analysis: class "balance." Many old school gamers think worrying about such matters is a peculiarly modern notion, but it's not. For almost as long as I've played the game, I've known players who fretted over whether this class or that class was "overpowered" or "underpowered" compared to the others. It's a concern I've never really worried about myself, partially because I think all but the most egregious mechanical differences take a backseat to what actually happens at the table. Nitpicker and hair splitter I may be about many topics relating to D&D but this isn't one of them.

However, I'm hardly representative of anyone but myself and I expect that, when Moore wrote this article he was speaking on behalf a sizable number of gamers who had a sneaking suspicion that some AD&D character classes were better (or worse) than others -- and he was going to prove it. Moore's analysis hinges on comparing the classes according to accumulated experience points, not level. His thesis is that, by examining the relative strengths and weaknesses of each class at certain XP benchmarks, he might get a sense of which classes are more (or less) potent than others. In doing this, Moore discovers that, for the most part, AD&D's classes are reasonably balanced against one another, with two significant exceptions, along with a third point of discussion.

The first anomaly concerns druids, which Moore says are unusually tough compared to other classes. Compared to clerics, they advance very quickly and, more importantly, they continue to gain full hit dice all the way to 14th level, which also nets them more Constitution bonuses as well. Druids thus wind up being comparable to fighters at mid-levels and even surpassing them at higher levels. Consequently, he recommends increasing the druid's XP requirements to compensate. The second anomaly concerns monks, which Moore says are too weak in terms of hit points for a class that is supposed to fight hand-to-hand. He recommends that they have D6 hit points. Finally, Moore says -- along with nearly every AD&D player I knew back in the day -- that bard, as presented in the Players Handbook, needs to go. He recommends Jeff Goelz's bard as a replacement.

In the end, "Charting the Classes" is actually a very modest and limited analysis of AD&D's character classes and Moore's suggestions are all quite reasonable. I believe I even adopted his recommendation regarding druids, as I know from experience that they were more potent than they had any right to be. Still, I largely find the idea of "balance" between the classes a Quixotic obsession that's played a lot of mischief with D&D in its later incarnations. But it is, unfortunately, a long and deeply held concern of many gamers and I don't expect it to ever go away.

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "The Astral Plane"

A Dragon article written by Roger E. Moore and with an introduction by E. Gary Gygax, where he states that "[this] is about as 'official' as is possible at this time?" For my 13 year-old self, this was as good as an article could get. Appearing in issue #67 (November 1982), "The Astral Plane" was a massive effort on the part of Moore to provide comprehensive rules for adventuring on the Astral Plane. It included discussions of astral encounters, astral travel, the Psychic Wind, movement, combat, and alterations to spells and magic items. There was also an accompanying adventure called "Fedifensor" (written by Allen Rogers) intended to be used in conjunction with Moore's rules. Taken together, it was very impressive package that solidified my sense that, aside from Gary Gygax, Roger E. Moore was one of a handful of Dragon writers whose stuff I could safely assume would be good.

We didn't do a lot of plane hopping in my old AD&D campaigns. I do recall a few visits to the Nine Hells and the Abyss and I suspect the characters did so by means of the Astral Plane on at least one occasion, but, if so, these trips weren't particularly memorable. Ultimately, that's the main problem with "The Astral Plane" – even with all the clever rules modifications that Moore came up with, the place is still deadly dull. That's not Moore's fault, because he was trying to work within the parameters laid down by AD&D up till that point and those parameters paint a rather uninspiring picture. Sure, the Githyanki hang out on the Astral Plane, but, other than that, what else makes this place cool? Why would anyone want to go there for any length of time? "The Astral Plane" doesn't answer that question and nothing in the AD&D books at the time provided a better answer.

That said, I did like the fact that Moore postulates that other planes will operate according to different laws than those of the Prime Material. That's something I strong advocate and think is essential to the feeling of "We're not in Kansas anymore" other planes should evoke. I also think, as was true in Queen of the Demonweb Pits, that "The Astral Plane" goes overboard in the level of specificity about how character abilities, spells, and magic items operate differently, but that's a criticism of implementation not of concept. So, in retrospect, I still like this article a great deal, even if I wouldn't use it as written in any game I am running now. It's still a great idea mine and a useful foundation for an approach to handling weird otherworlds in your D&D campaign.

The Articles of Dragon: "It's That Time of Year Again ..."

I'm sure this will come as a great surprise to longtime readers of this blog that, as a young man, I was fairly serious and earnest. Shocking, I know! Of all the things about which I was serious – and there were many – Dungeons & Dragons was near the top of the list. It's no exaggeration to say that, in the first few years after I discovered the game, D&D was an important part not merely of my life but also of my self-conception. I was a D&D player and I was sincerely proud of this fact in a way that I doubt I've ever been since.

Consequently, when I first came across issue #60 of Dragon (April 1982) and read its contents, I was taken aback. Sure, the article contained a further installment of Roger E. Moore's magisterial demihuman "Point of View" series (focusing on elves this time), along with more cantrips from Gary Gygax and other interesting stuff, but what really caught my eye were a pair of articles that played off longstanding Dragon columns, specifically "Giants in the Earth" and "Dragon's Bestiary." I say "played off," because neither installment in this issue was quite right, as I'll explain.

"Giants in the Earth" was replaced by "Midgets in the Earth" and, rather than presenting D&D stats for characters from classic fantasy and science fiction literature, what we got instead were write-ups for goofy original characters, like the kobold dictator Idi "Little Daddy" Snitmin, Morc the Orc, and master halfling thief Eubeen Hadd. Written by Roger E. Moore and accompanied by artwork that looks like it could have been drawn by Jim Holloway, "Midgets in the Earth" was clearly intended as nothing more than silly fun in honor of April Fool's Day. Please bear in mind that I read this article long before I'd come across the regular April Fool's issues of Polyhedron, so the concept was still somewhat new to me at the time.

The issue's "Dragon's Bestiary" was in a similar vein. Instead of the usual assortment of dangerous and unusual new monsters for use with D&D, we were given entries inspired by various pop culture "monsters," like Donald Duck or Marvin the Martian or the Bad News Bugbears. Like "Midgets in the Earth," these were clearly intended to be silly, but I found them irritating – all the more so because they were written by designers like Tom Moldvay and David Cook, who could have been writing really useful stuff. Why were they wasting effort on such nonsense, I thought? I'd much rather have had more serious content that I could drop into my ongoing AD&D campaign.

Yeah, I was a little tightly wound in those days. Go figure! In time, I came to be a bit more accepting of such silliness, but it took some time – and more April Fool's issues of Dragon to do it. I never fully embraced it, but I did become less uptight about it and the way I enjoyed my hobby. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself ...

The Articles of Dragon: "Giants in the Earth"

 As I pen more posts for this series, you'll notice that many of its entries are themselves about series of articles from the pages of Dragon. I could offer a lot of explanations for this, but the simplest, I suppose, is that, with series, you know what you're getting. In theory, if you like one entry in the series, you will probably enjoy those that follow. Series provide a foundation on which to build and a format to follow that makes them attractive to both writers and readers – that's the reason this blog has so many series of its own.

Issue #59 (March 1982) introduced me to a new series of Dragon articles. Entitled "Giants in the Earth," this was an irregular feature devoted to presenting famous characters from fantasy (and occasionally science fiction) literature in terms of Dungeons & Dragons game mechanics. This particular issue included write-ups for five different characters – Poul Anderson's Sir Roger de Tourneville (by Roger E. Moore), L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea (by David Cook), Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers (by Andrew Dewar), Clifford Simak's Mark Cornwall and Sniveley (both by Roger E. Moore). 

At the time I first saw this article, I think I was only familiar with Sir Roger de Tourneville, having already read The High Crusade. The others were completely unknown to me and, in the case of the Simak characters, I'm embarrassed to admit, still are. Nevertheless, I found the piece fascinating for several reasons. First, almost from the moment I started playing D&D, I began to think about how best to stat up characters from myth, legend, and books. Seeing how "professional" writers did so held my interest. Second, many of the entries – even the science fiction ones! – included suggestions on introducing these characters into an ongoing D&D campaign, an idea I'd never considered before. Finally, the entries served to introduce me to authors and books I might otherwise never have encountered, just as Appendix N and Moldvay's "Inspirational Source Material" section had done.

That last one is of particular importance to me, especially nowadays, as the inspirations for fantasy roleplaying shift away from books of all kinds and more toward movies and video games. With the benefit of hindsight, one of the things that's very obvious is how much more literary fantasy was in my youth. Arguably, that's because, until comparatively recently, fantasy hadn't much penetrated the mainstream and thus there were few other ready sources for the genre. If you were interested in wizards and dragons and magic swords, books were all you had, whereas today we have a greater number of options available to us. Perhaps – and maybe I'm just being an old man again – I detect a difference in kind between the literary fantasies I grew up reading (and that inspired the founders of the hobby) and the pop culture stuff we see today.

The irony of my being introduced to "Giants in the Earth" through this issue is that it's one of the last ones published in Dragon. Though I'd eventually see some of the earlier installments, the vast majority of them were long out of my reach, their having been published long before I started playing RPGs, let alone reading the magazine. Even so, the few that I did read served the useful purpose of broadening my knowledge of fantasy and science fiction, as well as acquainting me with characters and writers who would, in time, become lifelong companions. 

REPOST: The Articles of Dragon: "A Special Section: Dwarves"

For issue #58 (February 1982) of Dragon, I'm going to cheat a little – well, a lot – by focusing on not just one but four different articles. I think it's justified, though, because the articles cover closely related topics and three of them were written by a single author, the inestimable Roger E. Moore, in those days when he was not yet the editor-in-chief of Dragon. "A Special Section: Dwarves" is also an important collection of articles, one that, in my opinion, marks a turning point in the history of D&D. Indeed, it's a collection that makes me wonder if perhaps the Silver Age didn't begin sooner than I have suggested in the past, for these articles were extremely influential and ushered in not just explicit follow-ups by Moore himself, but also a growing codification of not just D&D's non-human races but many other aspects of its fictional milieu.

The first of the four articles is "The Dwarven Point of View," which presented a psychology of the dwarves, explaining aspects of their thoughts process and, by extension, the society and culture that arose from them. "Bazaar of the Bizarre" featured two new (and forgettable) dwarven magic items, while "Sage Advice" answers a battery of increasingly nitpicky questions about dwarves. "The Gods of the Dwarves" is probably the most well-known of the four dwarf articles in issue #58, if only because it was officially canonized by Gary Gygax, who included it in his 1985 Unearthed Arcana expansion to AD&D. I'll also never forget "The Gods of the Dwarves" because it included an illustration depicting Berronar, the dwarven goddess of safety, truth, and home, with a beard:

I've long had a fondness for this piece of artwork, both because I relentlessly used it in my youth to bludgeon those who denied that female dwarves had beards (in contradiction of both Tolkien and Gygax – so you know it had to be true!) and to emphasize that dwarves aren't just short, stocky humans. They are, effectively, an alien race and to expect them to conform to human ways is absurd, not to mention demonstrating a severe lack of imagination.

When this quartet of articles was released, I adored them and made every effort to incorporate as much of them into my ongoing campaign as I could. Nowadays, I have much more mixed feelings about them, chiefly because they, almost certainly unintentionally, became the fount from which subsequent discussion of dwarves flowed. That is, later writers – and even TSR itself – treated Moore's ideas as normative, the result being that, as the '80s wore on, the portrayal of dwarves in AD&D became less diverse. At the time, I didn't care; indeed, I was very happy with "official" information on dwarves and all the demihuman races, because I wanted my campaign to conform to the conceptions of my betters in the hobby. In retrospect, though, I feel less happy with these articles and wish their influence had been more limited.

(The original version of this article and its comments can be found here.)

A (Very) Brief Pictorial History of Beholders

The creation of Terry Kuntz, brother of Rob Kuntz, the beholder first appeared in Supplement I to OD&D, Greyhawk in 1975. Since then, the eye tyrant (as it is sometimes known) has become a very strong contender for title of Most Iconic Monster of Dungeons & Dragons. It's also one of my favorite monsters in the game. The first illustration of a beholder appeared on the cover to Greyhawk and was drawn by Greg Bell. As you'll see from the artwork that follows, Bell's version of the beholder is quite distinctive, having a smooth body, a sleepy-looking central eye, and a comparatively small mouth.

Tom Wham, in the AD&D Monster Manual (1977), takes a slightly different tack. His beholder looks to be armor plated. Its central eye is large and bulbous, while its mouth is huge. This is the first version of the monster I ever saw, so it's my default image of it.

A couple of years later, in 1979, The Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album was published by Troubador Press. The book contained this image of the beholder by Greg Irons. In general, I'd say it looks closer to Wham's illustration than Bell's.  

The next year, 1980, was when the first official AD&D miniatures appeared. Here's a beholder as painted by Ray Rubin, from the box art of the "Dwellers Below" set. Its appearance is quite close to that of Wham's illustration.

The actual beholder miniature from the set looks like this:

Issue #76 of Dragon (August 1983) includes the article, "The Ecology of the Beholder" by Ed Greenwood and Roger E. Moore. Accompanying it is this illustration of a beholder by Roger Raupp. Take note of its eye stalks, which looks a bit like the legs of a crab or spider.

A month later, in September 1983, the second episode of the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon series featured a beholder. Its eye stalks are snaky or wormy in appearance, while its mouth has the largest teeth of any version yet.

Citadel acquired the AD&D miniatures license in 1985 and produced a beholder figure. I don't know the precise year in which it was released. Though it's somewhat hard to tell from this image, the miniature looks pretty close to the Monster Manual depiction, right down to the plated body.

Also released in 1985 were the Dungeons & Dragons Master Rules, which included this picture of a beholder, as imagined by Jeff Easley. This illustration is interesting for its half-lidded appearance, something that's not really present in previous versions.

Toward the end of the 1e period, TSR released Waterdeep and the North (1987) for use with the Forgotten Realms setting. Its cover includes a beholder by Keith Parkinson. His version not only includes segmented eyestalks like Roger Raupp's but also upper and lower eye lids.

The cover to the Monstrous Compendium (1989) features a beholder by Jeff Easley. The armor plates are not present. Instead, the beholder appears to be very fleshy in appearance.

Meanwhile, the MC's interior gives us this illustration by Jim Holloway. The armor plates are back, as are the broad proportions of Wham's Monster Manual illustration (though the eye stalks look unique).

The Monstrous Manual (1993) gives us this very odd illustration by Tony DiTerlizzi, which may have the largest central eye-to-body proportions of any version of the beholder. 

I have intentionally excluded all the artwork of beholders found in the Spelljammer boxed sets and modules, both because there's so much of it and because it's intentionally varied in keeping with its idiosyncratic interpretation of beholders. Consequently, I'm not certain the extent to which they're at all representative of depictions of these monsters during the TSR era of D&D. On the other hand, it's quite possible these depictions were influential on those that followed in the '90s and into the 21st century. If anyone has any thoughts on this particular point, I'd be interested in hearing them.

As usual, I've no doubt left out a lot of illustrations, focusing primarily on those I either remembered clearly from my youth or those appearing in products to which I have ready access. If you feel like there are notable ones I've forgotten, I'd be interested in learning about those, too. 

Polyhedron: Issue #30

With issue #30 of Polyhedron (July 1986), we reach the final issue I ever owned or read. My subscription ended that summer and, with my final year of high school approaching, I was so preoccupied with other matters that I elected not to continue reading. To be fair, I let my subscription to Dragon lapse around the same time, but I'd still pick up stray copies of the magazine to keep abreast of the latest news about D&D and other RPGs. Consequently, this will be last post in which I do a recap of Polyhedron's contents. I'll do a summation of my feelings about the RPGA newszine next week before moving on to a new regular feature the following week.

As has often been the case, this month's cover is drawn by Roger Raupp. It depicts the six characters from Christopher S. Jones's "Nienna & Friends," the first installment in "The New Rogues Gallery," which is "a continuing feature ... through which members may share their most interesting characters and NPCs." In truth, this is just an outgrowth of the "Encounters" column that began all the way back in issue #8, which had already morphed into something akin to this. In any case, "Nienna & Friends" presents write-ups (including AD&D stats) for the half-Drow fighter/magic-user Nienna, her human cleric mother, Rhodara Larith, and their protector, the Grey Elf magic-user Zered Camaron. Zered's son, Elerion, along with Nienna's evil Drow father, Tray-Dor, and his drider companion, Day-Ron, complete the group. In general, I like articles like this, if only because they give me some sense of what happens in other people's campaigns. I know "let me tell you about my character" is supposed to be cringeworthy, but I genuinely do enjoy this sort of thing (and occasionally indulge in it myself).

"In Search of the 12th Level Mage" by Roger E. Moore is a good article on the much-vexed question of demographics in Dungeons & Dragons. Moore takes a look at the population information provided in the revised World of Greyhawk boxed set and plugs it into the information found in the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide regarding the makeup of NPC adventuring parties to arrive at a possible answer. His conclusion is that high level characters of any class are quite rare, especially so for magic-users, who number only about 200 out of every 1000 people (who are themselves only one-tenth of every 10,000 people). Of those 200, only 1 is 8th-level, meaning that the mage of the title would be a special NPC created and placed by the referee. Of course, the question of how many NPCs have classes/levels is itself an interesting one without a definitive answer. Even so, speculations like this are fun and an important part of worldbuilding in my opinion.

Brian Leikam's "In Defense of the Lowly Fighter" is, as its title suggests, a look at the fighter class in Dungeons & Dragons and how to make it more appealing to players. I wrote a post about this article three and a half years ago, so I won't say much more here. However, I largely agree with Leikam that fighters should be more common and better appreciated in D&D, especially nowadays, where the human fighter has more or less become synonymous with "boring." 

"Ravager" is the first part of an AD&D adventure by Jeff Grubb. Though it doesn't mention it anywhere, I assume this was a RPGA tournament scenario at some point, since most of the adventures that appear in Polyhedron began life that way. Its premise is that a bandit-king, the eponymous Ravager, has arisen and, thanks to ancient magic, has made himself effectively immortal. The goal of the characters is to raid a tomb in the Grey Desert that might contain information on how to reverse this magic and render the Ravager mortal again. The tomb is small and filled with traps, tricks, and puzzles, in addition to monsters. I expect it would be a challenge to navigate it successfully. Included with the adventure are six pregenerated PCs whose names could well be Asterix characters: Necromantix, Logistix, Goldbrix, etc.

"The Treasure Chest" returns in limited form, offering just back issues of Polyhedron and four RPGA adventures written by Frank Mentzer, like To the Aid of Falx. There's also a similarly abbreviated "Fletcher's Corner" by Michael Przytarski, in which he muses about crossbreeds among the various D&D races, another much-vexed topic in gaming circles. Przytarski offers no new insights or answers here. Slightly more useful is Jeffrey A, Martin's "Beware the New Golems," which offers up four new golem types: copper, oak, brass, and shadow. The last one is notable, because it's a golem that can only be made by illusionists, something you don't see very often in AD&D, where the illusionist was, in my opinion, and underused and under-appreciated class.

Preston Shah's "Little Miss Sure Shot" was unexpected. It's not just a Boot Hill article, but a history lesson as well, providing historical details and game information on using Annie Oakley in your games. I like articles of this sort, but then I'm also a fan of historical gaming, so I'm probably not a good gauge of how well received articles like this would have been received. "New and Old" by James M. Ward is a one-page preview of some aspects of the upcoming new (third) edition of Gamma World. He also reiterates the oft-repeated promise that TSR planned to do a new edition of Metamorphosis Alpha to tie into it as well. That didn't happen, of course, but I don't doubt that it was planned. 

"Dispel Confusion" is reduced to one page and tackles only AD&D questions, nearly all of which are highly technical in nature. With hindsight, this is one of those aspects of the TSR era of D&D that seems baffling. At the time, though, a fair number of gamers, myself included, really did care about "official" answers to rules questions. Finally, there's Errol Farstad's review of Timemaster, which he thought had "potential to be very enjoyable," even though it still had a few "rough spots." That's a fair assessment, I think.

And that's all folks – the end of my re-reads of Polyhedron. Next week, as I stated at the beginning of this post, I'll share some final thoughts about the more than 20 issues I read during my time as a subscriber. There's frankly a lot to say on the subject and I think it's deserving of its own post.

Polyhedron: Issue #29

Issue #29 of Polyhedron is another April Fool's Day issue, though it actually appeared in May of 1986. The issue features a cover by Tom Wham, which is always a delight. I wish the same could be said of its content. I readily admit that I'm not an ideal audience for issues like this, but that's not because I lack a sense of humor. Rather, I simply dislike forced humor and this issue is full of it. Needless to say, I didn't enjoy re-reading this one. Apologies in advance if my frustration gets the better of me.

"Notes from HQ" is typically ephemeral and focused on RPGA matters. The only genuinely interesting thing in it is the announcement of the Gamers' Choice Awards. "Unlike other gaming industry awards, for which the winners are chosen by manufacturers and special panels, these awards are given to those companies whose products are judged the best by the most qualified judges of all – the gamers themselves." I must be old, because I don't recall ever hearing of these awards before. On the other hand, I was never much of a con goer, so that might explain my ignorance. 

Skip Williams gives us "The Lighter Side of Encounters II," a sequel to his article in the previous year's April Fool's Day issue. Like its predecessor, what makes the article interesting is not so much its content as the origin of the content, namely AD&D campaigns run by the Lake Geneva staff of TSR, in this case Williams himself and Frank Mentzer. Williams presents two different encounters, one involving a mad dash through a dungeon and another about trying to prevent a pit fiend from regenerating, that aren't exactly humorous in context, but that seem so when presented in isolation. They're the kinds of things that happen in any RPG campaign played with friends and I love them for that reason. This article is probably the best in the issue and it's because it's the most "serious."

"The Camel's Nose" by Mike Selinker is an AD&D adventure that takes up 16 pages – half of the issue. It's a humorous scenario for six pregenerated player characters, all of whom are valley elves with ridiculous names like "Tattieboggle Spauldrocky" or "Arglebargle Collieshangle." These characters are tasked with protecting a talking camel (a cleric of the Camel Lord, Camelopardus), on his journey across the Burning Desert to a shrine of his deity. He brings with him a sacred rock called the Camel's Nose and ... well, I think you can probably guess where this is going. The adventure is filled with puns and humorous allusions and general silliness, like the Camels Oasis shopping center. I'm sure someone might find it funny, but that someone is not me.

Selinker returns with "The Ecology of Tiamat," which is a rambling dialog between Feargall the All-Noxious and Greenhorn the dim as they "humorously" discuss Feargall's many encounters with Tiamat. It's strange, self-referential, and fourth wall-breaking and, again, I just found it tedious. Your mileage may vary. "Fractured Spells" by Rick Reid is a collection of goofy spells for all magic-using classes, from neutralize person to detect chum to continual lice and more. As you can see, they're all based on puns or misreadings of pre-existing spells. I'll give the author points for cleverness, but not much else.

"The Gods of the Gamma World Game" by James M. Ward is a very strange article. Ward presents five larger-than-life characters from the setting of Gamma World, each of which represents "a different ideal." For example, Ren – there's that name again – is the archetypal scientist, while Tobor the Unstoppable is the archetypal robot. If I squint, I can sort of see what Ward's getting at with these characters. They're more akin to "tall tales" like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill than "gods" in the usual sense. That's kind of interesting. However, Ward saddles them all with absurd Gamma World game stats akin to what you'd find in Deities & Demigods and serendipitously provide additional insight for my recent post about that very book and the drawbacks of its presentation.

The issue ends with Roger E. Moore's "Savage Sword of Lugnut the Barbarian," another "humorous" story, this time about a mighty-thewed barbarian and his quest to save a princess from Skuzzdrool the Ultra-Necromancer. It's not very funny, even as a parody of Conan, but's thankfully short, which is more than can be said of "The Camel's Nose." I still cannot understand why half the issue was devoted to that adventure ...

Oh well. One more issue to go before this series ends, which is probably for the best. My patience is wearing thin, especially after this issue.

Polyhedron: Issue #26

Issue #26 of Polyhedron (November 1985) is another one that I recall very vividly, almost entirely because of its Roger Raupp cover, depicting a reptilian alien superimposed over what looks to be photograph from one of the Viking landers sent to Mars in the mid-70s. The cover was inspired by Roger E. Moore's article, "Gamma Mars," on which I've briefly commented before. I have lots to say about it but will hold off on doing so until later in this post. 

"Notes from HQ" is, as usual, mostly filled with RPGA ephemera of minimal lasting value. There is, however, a brief section worthy of mention. The "City Project" announced in the previous issue is moving forward, though Penny Petticord asks RPGA members to "hold your actual submissions until specific procedures are announced next issue." Furthermore, she explains HQ "will be finalizing details with Gary Gygax" regarding the placement of the city within the World of Greyhawk setting. Of course, Gygax would depart TSR less than a year later and the City Project would, in turn, head in a different direction.

Next up is "Squeaky Wheels," a guest editorial by Frank Mentzer, in which he tackles criticisms of roleplaying games in the mass media. Mentzer isn't talking solely about the religiously-inflected Satanic Panic – though he does have rebuttals to offer on that score – but also to more general worries about RPGs, such as the suggestion that playing these games inclines one to suicide. I must admit that, despite having lived through these times, I encountered almost no resistance to my involvement in roleplaying. If anything, my parents and the parents of my friends were incredibly supportive of our hobby. Perhaps we were just lucky, I don't know. In any case, I'll never cease to be baffled when I come across articles like this one. They're yet more evidence that the past really is a foreign country.

"Con-Fusion" by Fas Eddie Carmien is a brief collection of thank yous to the volunteers at GenCon 18 – nothing special. "Where Chaos Reigns" by Sonny Scott is more amusing, being a fictionalized account of his time working telephone assistance on behalf of the RPGA at GenCon. Though hardly an article for the ages, it's fun and, as someone who's worked at a phone bank a few times over the course of my life, the inanity of the calls Scott recounts seems very true to life. Michael D. Selinker's "A View of GenCon 18 Game Fair from RPGA Network HQ" is a day-by-day recounting of the con from the perspective of someone involved in its operation. I've never been involved in running a con, so I found this article more interesting than I expected. It's helped by the fact that Selinker can spin a good yarn and has a decent sense of humor.

The third and final part of Frank Mentzer's AD&D tournament adventure, Needle, appears in this issue. Part I focused on the location of the titular obelisk, while Part II was about the process of retrieving it for transport it across the sea. Part III concerns what happens after it's been installed in the palace square of the king who wanted it in the first place. In case you're wondering: a magical door to the Moon opens in its base and the characters must journey through it to see its wonders. As premises for an adventure go, it's not a bad one and Mentzer does a solid job of presenting intriguing and challenging encounters. 

"Dispel Confusion" is short this month, tackling only AD&D and Gamma World questions, none of which are especially memorable. For me, what's most fascinating is how increasingly truncated this column has become. In early issues of Polyhedron, "Dispel Confusion" covered two or three pages and covered all of TSR's RPGs. As time went on, its page length shortened and its focus contracted, with only AD&D and Gamma World being consistently covered. The former is understandably, as it was always TSR's most popular and best selling game. Gamma World's continued presence strikes me as stranger, as I never got the impression it was very successful, despite its having no fewer than four editions during TSR's time. 

Speaking of Gamma World, we come at last to Roger E. Moore's "Gamma Mars," which, as its title suggests, presents information on the state of the planet Mars in the post-apocalyptic 25th century of the game. In this timeline, Mars was first visited by human beings in 2002, with a stable colony growing there over the course of the 21st century. By 2076, the colony became independent of Earth. The colonists would eventually discover evidence of alien habitation on the planet – the reptilian Luntarians – but these beings are not natives to Mars but visitors from another planet outside our solar system. A small number of Luntarians placed themselves into suspended animation in the past and were subsequently revived just in time for the Social Wars to engulf Earth and cut Mars off from the mother planet.

I was a big fan of the articles from Dragon that described the state of the Moon in Gamma World, so I was understandably excited to learn more about the wider solar system of the game's setting. As described by Moore, Mars has only been partially terraformed. Its atmosphere, for example, remains too thin for humans to breathe unaided. In addition, pure strain humans predominate, since Mars largely sat out the conflict that devastated Earth. The result is a very different take on Gamma World, one where rival cities jockey with one another for power and rumors of alien ruins and technology form the basis for adventure. At the time, I found it compelling stuff; even now, I think there's something remarkable about it.

Jon Pickens provides "Unofficial Illusionist Spells" that are actually fairly interesting, at least when compared to the cleric and magic-user spells from previous issues. I think that's because, in AD&D, there are comparatively few illusionist magic items and thus the spells here don't exist primarily to act as means of explaining how such items exist. Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" also deals with magic, in this case magic items, which he first divides into the categories of "mundane, powerful, deadly, and ridiculous" with the goal of suggesting how common each type should be in a good campaign. He also addresses the question of "magic shops," something I get the impression was becoming increasingly common in mid-80s AD&D (based on how often it was criticized in official TSR publications). The issue ends with Errol Farstad's positive review of Twilight: 2000.

Twenty-six issues in, Polyhedron continues to lack a solid, consistent foundation on which to build. As I have repeatedly said in this series, you never know what to expect from an issue, with some having numerous useful and excellent articles and others ... less so. While I completely understand why this was the case, it's disappointing and played a big part in why I'd eventually let my subscription lapse, even as I continued to read Dragon for many more years to come. 

Polyhedron: Issue #25

Issue #25 of Polyhedron (September 1985) features eye-catching artwork by the Marvel Bullpen, depicting the Hulk and long-time foe, the Abomination, bursting through the cover. Both characters appear in the issue's Marvel Super Heroes article – a first for the newszine. At the time, I was quite pleased by this expansion of Polyhedron's coverage, because I was a big fan of MSH and was always on the look-out for new material (particularly write-ups of Marvel characters that hadn't yet appeared elsewhere).

Normally, "Notes from HQ" is filled with RPGA-related ephemera and thus doesn't command my attention for long. This time, though, part of it is of greater interest, specifically the call for Dungeon Masters to submit "a store, tavern, house, city block, NPC, street encounter, guild" for inclusion in a fantasy setting to be used by the RPGA as a "home base" and possible locale for adventures. Robert Asprin's Thieves' World is referenced as an inspiration and it's stated that Gary Gygax has agreed to allow this city to be placed in his World of Greyhawk setting. If any of this sounds familiar, that's because I suspect the project was eventually retooled for use with the Forgotten Realms, becoming Ravens Bluff, the Living City, an RPGA staple for years to come.

Jon Pickens offers up a second part of his "Unofficial Magic-User Spells" series, again looking to existing magic items as source of new spells (like the ring of spell turning and ring of x-ray vision). It's fine, if a bit unimaginative, though I cannot forgive the consistent misspelling of "absorption" as "absorbtion" throughout, especially when the magic item that inspired it, the rod of absorption, spells it correctly. The "RPGA Network Player and Judge Standings" is hardly worth mentioning, since it's little more than three pages' worth of names. Looking through them, I spotted the usual assortment of TSR employees and freelancers, along with a few others whose names I recognized from Dragon and elsewhere. I wonder if any readers of this blog had earned enough tournament XP to make it onto the list?

Part II of Frank Mentzer's AD&D adventure, Needle, also appears in this issue. Having found the titular needle – a magical obelisk – in Part I, the characters are now tasked with removing it for transport back to their homeland while dealing with hostile bullywugs and pirates. The adventure is quite fascinating, in that it's mostly a matter of resource management and logistics. The characters command a team of workers and mercenaries over the course of the several weeks needed to achieve their goal. How well they manage their resources, as well as how they respond to various threats, determine whether or not their mission is successful. I have no idea how it would be to play, the idea behind this scenario sounds compelling.

Michael Przytarski's "Fletcher's Corner" returns, talking about high-level adventures this time. That's a topic of great interest to me, since there aren't a lot of good examples of them in my opinion and I'd love to read some good advice on how to create my own. Sadly, there's not much meat to this article. It's mostly brief nuggets ("Try not to be bring the gods into it") intended to keep things somewhat grounded and avoiding boredom ("Three red dragons are fun, but they can become tiresome"). Perhaps the article's brevity (one page) prevents Przytarski from getting into the weeds of this topic, I don't know. Regardless, I didn't find what I was looking for here, which is a shame. My quest continues.

"Rampage" by Roger E. Moore is a straightforward Marvel Super Heroes scenario, in which four different super-strong characters – the Hulk, Hercules, the Abomination, and Titania – in the streets of New York. It's not deep, but it's fun. I also appreciate the way that Moore presents different Karma award charts for each character as a way to highlight their differences. That's something I always liked about Marvel Super Heroes and that's harder to implement in a game where the characters are all original creations of the players rather than established personalities. 

With apologies to Rembert N. Parker, I'm going to pass over his "How to Succeed at Judging an RPGA Network Event," because it's of minimal interest to me. "Dispel Confusion" consists of two full pages of AD&D questions, with no other RPGs represented. By and large, the questions this issue concern ambiguities in the rules and, as such, aren't that interesting to discuss here. The most notable question concerned psionics and its use, with the answer noting that psionics will be revised "in the future." Rounding out the issue is a positive review of Paranoia, an old fave of mine, though it's been years since I've attempted to play it. Maybe I should change that.

As always, Polyhedron is so much more of a mixed bag than is Dragon and it's frustrating. Most issues contain good material, but very few are consistently good. That probably explains why I eventually stopped reading it, while I continued with Dragon well into the 1990s. I suspect this is because Polyhedron always had a much more "amateur" quality, which limited both its audience and its submissions. It's a real pity.

Polyhedron: Issue #24

Issue #24 of Polyhedron (July 1985), with its cover illustration by Roger Raupp, is another one I remember very clearly from my youth – and the cover is a big part of the reason why. When I first saw this odd collection of characters, I honestly had no idea what I was looking at. Were they supposed to be orcs or half-orcs or something else entirely? As I turned out, my guess wasn't far from the truth, but that initial perplexity compelled me to read the issue with great interest. Nearly forty years later, I still remember it.

"Notes from HQ" can be quickly dispensed with, since most of it concerns RPGA matters of little lasting interest. The main thing worth discussing is a note indicating that, in response to pleas from the editor in previous issues, there have been a number of submissions from RPGA members. Indeed, Penny Petticord states that "we have not rejected a single article." She quickly adds, though, that submissions are still very few in number and that "only a fraction of the so-called active membership has contributed." At the time there were supposedly "over 8000" RPGA members worldwide, so I can sympathize with Petticord's lament about the small number of submissions. 

"Letters" is quite interesting this issue. First, there's a letter in which a reader complains about the heavy D&D focus of Polyhedron, as well as the lack of support for Marvel Super Heroes. In response to the first part, the editors explain that Polyhedron can only publish those articles that are submitted to it, so, if anyone wants to see more non-D&D content, they'll need to make it happen themselves. As I think I said before, I wish I'd paid more attention to this sort of stuff when I was a subscriber, because I probably would have had better luck getting published in Polyhedron than I ever did in Dragon. In answer to the second part, the editors point out that, because MSH is a licensed game, Marvel itself must review and approve everything it publishes for the game. This makes it harder for any writer, especially those outside the TSR staff, to produce new articles to support it. Also among the letters published are a couple discussing the bad publicity Dungeons & Dragons is getting in their area, a consequence of the ongoing Satanic Panic. If I hadn't lived through those times, I'd hardly believed such things happened!

"Secrets of Success" by Steve Null offers tips on playing in RPGA tournaments. Never having participated in RPGA events, I must say I only briefly skimmed this article and saw nothing worthy of comment here. "Unofficial New Magic-User Spells" by Jon Pickens continues what he began in issue #22. The selection of new spells continues to focus replicating the effects of AD&D magic items, which is fine, but I'd have liked a little more variety myself. More notable, I feel, is that, like its predecessor, it includes the word "unofficial" in its title – a reminder that nothing that appears in Polyhedron carries the official TSR seal of approval. 

Part I of Frank Mentzer's AD&D adventure, "Needle," appears in this issue. Designed for characters of levels 8–10, this is another tournament adventure offered for the delectation of readers of Polyhedron, like most of the adventures published in its pages previously. The adventure concerns an expedition to locate and examine a powerful magic item – the titular Needle – that is found in a ruined city located in a far-off land. The characters are all members of an adventuring guild called SMART, which stands for Syndicate of Master Adventurers for the Recovery of Treasure. All the pregenerated characters have what I assume (hope?) are merely nicknames, like Slim, Smiley, Blondy, and Blaze. To be honest, I found this nomenclature detracted from my enjoyment of scenario, which is otherwise decent, filled with lots of challenges and puzzles. Maybe it's just me, but I prefer a slightly more serious tone when it comes to things like names.

Errol Farstad's "How Reviews are Done" is an overview of how RPGs and RPG products will be reviewed in Polyhedron, since such reviews are a new future in the newszine. All games are given a Difficulty rating from 1 to 4, with 1 being the easiest to learn for a newcomer and 4 being the hardest. Then, the product is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 in three other categories: Packaging, Rules and Explanations, and Miscellaneous. Taken together, these four ratings contribute to its Overall score, rated from 0 to 4 Stars. With the explanations out of the way, Farstad reviews Star Trek the Role Playing Game, to which he gives an overall rating of 3 Stars out of a possible 4. He had some minor (and frankly nitpicky) complaints about the game, which did not detract from his otherwise very positive opinion of it. Being a big fan of the old FASA game, I could not disagree with his assessment.

"The Grond Family & Friends" by Roger E. Moore is the first installment in a new series called "The New Rogues Gallery." Like the book after which its named, this series is intended to present write-ups and illustrations of characters from people's home campaigns – basically "Let me tell you about my character(s)" in written form. The eponymous John Grond is a half-ogre and it's his friends and family whom Roger Raupp depicted on the cover of this issue. Half-ogres were briefly described as a possible player character race by Gary Gygax in issue #29 of Dragon (September 1979). Moore apparently liked the idea enough to adopt and adapt for his own use. The article presents six characters, ranging from Grond himself (a 16th-level fighter) to his wife (a 4th-level half-ogre cleric) and followers, like Boron the Moron, a full ogre of limited intelligence.

"Fletcher's Corner" by Michael Przytarski – and people say my name is hard to spell – is the start of a new column devoted to "solving the everyday problems faced by anyone who judges role playing games." In short, it's another referee's advice column. Consequently, I expect it'll be filled with lots of good insights and advice that will be genuinely useful to someone who's sitting behind the screen for the first time but rather dull to the veterans among us. That's OK: there are always newcomers in need of advice and that's good for the hobby. For his inaugural column, Przytarski takes up the topic of introducing new characters (and, by extension, new players) to a campaign. It's a good topic and his advice is solid, though nothing I haven't heard before (or come to understand through years of play). It'll be interesting to see what he tackles next and whether I find it useful.

Concluding the issue is "Dispel Confusion," with answers to questions about D&D, AD&D, and Marvel Super Heroes. Sadly, none of the questions piqued my interest, because they were all very banal. Most pertained to discrepancies between two sections of the rules or details that had been inadvertently left out of the text – in short, the kinds of rules questions about which you can't say very much else. Personally, I've always enjoyed questions that afford the responder to pontificate a little about a philosophy of play or game design, but that's just me. Maybe next issue!