The Dragon #24, Vol 3.10 – D&D Chronologically

Cover by Elrohir (Ken Rahman)

now combined with Little Wars again going forward
Though only 48 pages, not 56, due to paper costs
Out on a Limb letters column makes its debut
Joe Orlowski leaving the mag to become convention director for TSR and Gary Jaquet replacing him

Melee in D&D – a fairly lengthy but good and comprehensive article reiterating that D&D combat is not meant to be a realistic simulation but instead an abstraction that’s sufficient enough to make it somewhat realistic and also fun without getting bogged down. Gygax also notes that Jean Wells and Lawrence Shick have joined the TSR Design Department

Featured Creature #2 – winners announced – low number of entries means they won’t run the competition again – 1st place to Robert Charrette and Erol Outs gets an honourable mention
The Society for Creative Anachronism – Allen Hammack tells of his experiences (with photos) attending an SCA event – it’s not just about whacking other people with fake swords!

Keeping the Magic-User in his Place – DM advice of ways to nerf magic-users if they’re too powerful
In Defense of Extraordinary Characters – a rebuttal against the odd criticism that high level characters are unrealistic – they’re called games people!

Chinese dragons – alters and expands what’s given in Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes
Another look at Lycanthropy – a bunch of extra rules – if you like that kind of thing
Narcisstics – another one of those really bad humourous monster things
Psionics Revisited – ugh – when will it ever end?! – this is a bunch of new powers as far as I can tell
Disease – random charts for duration and symptoms
The Ramifications of Alignment – an attempt to add extra delineations within the alignments and descriptions of gods that would be appropriate for these – eg Law is further split into things like Harmony, Justice, Knowledge, War, etc

Several criticisms of various articles and a bit of defensiveness on the part of the editor in response