it’s 36 pages instead of 32 – to accommodate the size of the L Sprague deCamp Green Magician story
Editorial
why do so many people take themselves and their hobby so seriously – have fun and a laugh!
Articles
a rebuttal to the letter about Cthulhu in Dragon #14 – too much detail for me to care less
Adventures of Monty Haul 3 – I find these tedious and just skim them
Sorcerer’s Scroll (always my most enjoyable part of the magazine) – Gygax talks about the same theme as the editorial – that D&D is a game which is meant to be fun and that one of the most frequent ways other people try to ‘improve’ it is to try and make it more realistic – which generally just makes it more tedious, not fun. An example he gives is of the Vancian system D&D uses vs making it more complex by having spell points. He also has a go at fanzine type publications, which to my mind always makes him come off as having a chip on his shoulder when he should really just ignore them. I guess some of the personal attacks just got to him.
Ward writes about game balance – basically the advice is: don’t make things too easy or too hard for your players
Variants
near eastern mythos – ie Sumerian, Babylonian, Canaanite
an extensive (5 pages) new class – the ninja
some variant to allow clerics and magic-users the use of swords but with big downsides (or something – I didn’t take the time to fully grok the mechanics)
