There’s a lot in this one.
What’s New
- From the next issue in April, the Dragon will be going monthly
- We get circulation information – there are basically about 6000 copies of each issue printed and that number is continuing to rise
- The Souvenir font is used in a couple of ads. Eg:
Articles
- Humourus encounters in D&D with some funny anecdotes
- Variant – illusionists – basically a bunch of spell changes
- Variant – Persian mythos – ie a bunch of demi-god stats
- Thoughts on the Speed of a Lightning Bolt – tedious plussing and minussing of various factors in a melee round as detailed in Eldritch Wizardry (which splits rounds into segments) to show how a magic user could react before a fighter
- Ship’s Cargo – random table to determine what’s in the hold of a captured ship
- The Druids – the real world history of druids
- Official article – Cthulhu Mythos – this was pretty well done – not just stats and mechanics but quite a lot of flavour text – my knowledge of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos is almost non-existent so this was quite a good primer
- A very short review of the Monster Manual – big thumbs up
Story
- Quag Keep by Andre Norton – this is a preview of the full book, the first D&D book. Usually I don’t read the fiction in Dragon but in this case I’ve made an exception and I’ll read the book, seeing as it’s the first semi-official D&D book. Having said that, the writing is a bit rubbish! Lots of tortured sentences. More on this when I read the full thing.
Date Information
Along with the announcement of going monthly, Kask mentions that the April issue will be sent out in the last week of March. Also in future, many articles will be selected a month or two before publication with only a few written just prior to publication.