Dragon Magazine #1

I've played Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs for most of my life, but only in the last few years have I developed an interest in the hobby's history. It's been a lot of fun learning about these early days - fascinating characters and dramatic events abound!

In this series of articles, I want to look closely at the most important magazine the RPG industry has ever produced. TSR Periodicals published The Dragon issue 1 in June 1976. It was 32 pages long and had a cover price of $1.50. 

The editor was military veteran Tim Kask, TSR's first full-time employee. Kask had already edited a range of D&D supplements by this time, but was now focusing on periodicals. In "Dragon Rumbles" (the editorial), Kask explained the purpose of the new magazine:

"This issue marks a major step for TSR Hobbies Inc. With it, we have bid farewell to the safe, secure world of the house organ, and have entered the arena of competitive magazine publishing. We have activated a new division of the corporation; TSR Periodicals. We are soliciting advertisers, and giving notice to the rest of the pack that we have arrived with a vengeance, with a mission to fulfill. That mission is to publish the best magazine devoted to Sword & Sorcery, Fantasy, Science Fiction and Role Playing gaming."

For those unfamiliar with the term, a "house organ" is a magazine published by a company to promote its products and services. Preceding The Dragon was a TSR house organ called The Strategic Review, which lasted only seven issues.

Kask squeezed an impressive number of articles into The Dragon, covering Dungeons & Dragons, wargames, and fiction.

Dungeons & Dragons

Let's start with D&D. In "How to use Non-Prime-Requisite Character Attributes," Wesley Ives suggests using character attributes to resolve actions not covered by the rules. For example, if your character wants to move a boulder, roll against your Strength attribute. This idea seems obvious now but was still new back in 1976! Ives’ actual system is overly complex, but the concept is sound.

James M. Ward follows up with "Magic and Science: Are They Compatible in D&D?" His answer is a resounding "yes," and he gives some sample tech items from his own game. Ward later wrote Metamorphosis Alpha, the first science-fiction RPG, so he clearly had a strong interest in this genre.

In "Languages," Lee Gold shares some of her D&D house rules on the titular topic. She recounts a couple of delightful anecdotes, including the existence of a horse language and even a wall language! Gold was (and is) the editor of Alarums and Excursions, an influential gaming zine.

Next up, "Creature Feature" presents a new D&D monster, the bulette (also known as the landshark). This monster became a game staple and has certainly been featured many times at my table! The author is not specified, but I believe Kask was responsible.

"Hints for D&D Judges: Wilderness" gives several simple tips for running adventures in the wild and focuses primarily on mapping. The author, Joe Fischer, is best known for inventing the ranger class.

In "Mighty Magic Miscellany," Peter Aronson presents several new spells for the illusionist, a magic-user subclass he first shared in The Strategic Review #4. The article includes classic spells such as color spray, blur, and phantasmal killer. I’m always excited to come across the origins of such D&D elements.

Wrapping up our D&D content, "The Three Kindreds of the Eldar" describes elven sub-races: the Silvan, the Sindar, and the Noldor. Unfortunately, the article presents little gameable content and leans too heavily on Tolkien. The author, Larry Smith, designed the Battle of the Five Armies board game, which TSR was distributing. 

Wargames

There are several columns dedicated to wargames and board games, topics that were heavily featured in the early years of The Dragon. In "The Battle of the Five Armies in Miniature," the aforementioned Larry Smith presents a scenario for simulating this famous conflict using the Chainmail miniature rules by TSR. 

Next, "Royal Armies of the Hyborean Age Additions" by Lin Carter and Scott Bizar includes some supplementary rules for the titular wargame, which was set in the world of Conan and published by Bizar's company, Fantasy Games Unlimited. Carter was a well-known fantasy author and editor who wrote the game’s setting information.

In the first of many articles for the magazine, Gary Gygax presents "Hobbits and Thieves in Dungeon," a short set of supplementary rules for the DUNGEON! board game by TSR. It’s a short article, but still a milestone of sorts.

We also have the confusingly named "Press Release," a game review column by Richard Mataka. Classic Warfare by TSR is "an innovative rule book for the ancient gamer of any era." Citadel by Fantasy Games Unlimited is “a challenging, fun, and fast game.” And White Bear and Red Moon by Chaosium is “challenging and exciting right up to the end.” Mataka continues to publish game reviews down to the present day.

Fiction

There are three pieces of short fiction in The Dragon. In "Fafhrd & The Mouser Say Their Say," Fritz Lieber imagines himself explaining wargames to the famous fictional duo. This article is really a promotional piece for Lieber's upcoming wargame, Lankhmar, published by TSR. 

"The Search for the Forbidden Chamber" is a dungeon crawl featuring Dimwit the dwarf, Lumbo the elf, and Ralph the wizard. It's mildly amusing but mostly leans on anachronisms for the humor. The author was Gary "Jake" Jaquet, who later became the editor of The Dragon.

Finally, we have the first part of a serialized novella with the uninspiring title of "The Gnome Cache." It's a stuffy and verbose little piece with dull characters in a cliched situation (a young peasant wants to become a knight). Garrison Ernst is the credited author, which is one of Gary Gygax’s pseudonyms. The story struggled on for another six issues before Gygax abandoned it.

Other

There are several more small columns in the magazine, covering things such as conventions and people looking for games. I won't cover those columns in these reviews, nor will I discuss the cartoons very much (this issue features one called "Dirt").

Production values are relatively crude, with articles chopped up and spread throughout the magazine. The cover features a dragon painted by Bill Hannan, Tim Kask's junior college art teacher. While the image is reasonably attractive, it clashes badly with the cover text, resulting in a mess. Things would improve on the production front.

And that's a wrap! All things considered, it was a solid debut, with plenty to whet the appetite of fans. The highlights were the bulette and the illusionist spells. Next issue, we have monk combat, lots more fiction, and a new D&D character class: the alchemist!

An earlier version of this column originally appeared in EnWorld. Old issues of Dragon Magazine are available on the Internet Archive. You can view Issue 1 here.