Dragon Magazine #3
TSR Periodicals published The Dragon #3 in October 1976. It is 32 pages long and has a cover price of $1.50. In this issue, we have all new dwarves, social status tables, and many minor subclasses!
In the editorial, Tim Kask vigorously defends his decision to include so much fiction in the first two issues:
I include fiction in TD so that the reader's [games] will be better: fuller, more complete and better founded. Some of the fantasy campaigns now extant rely entirely upon the work of one author, or are centered around only one cycle or mythos. If that suits you, fine. As for myself, I'd rather play in a campaign that blends many cycles, mythos' and authors' work. It seems to have a richer flavor.
Kask conceded that this policy had been unpopular with fans and stated there would be far less fiction in future issues.
The first article, "War of the Empires" by Gary Gygax, is a reminisce of the titular game. It was an early science fiction play-by-mail wargame that involved a universe-wide struggle between the Greatest Empire and the League of All Worlds. War of the Empires debuted in 1966 but petered out after a few years. Gygax thought the game had great potential and wistfully hopes for its return.
Next, we have "Notes on Women & Magic" by Len Lakofka, one of the more notorious articles in the magazine's history. Lakofka was former president of the International Federation of Wargamers and a close friend of Gary Gygax. Modern readers are probably familiar with his character Leomund, the fictional creator of various spells.
The article, subtitled "Bringing the Distaff Gamer into D&D," aimed to modify the D&D character classes to be more "female-friendly," but his suggestions most likely had the opposite effect. He started by limiting female characters' strength and ability to progress in the fighter class. He also replaced the Charisma attribute with a Beauty attribute for women and included a bunch of new female-only spells, such as seduction and charm men. He also gave the female thief class some questionable level titles, such as Hag, Wench, and Succubus. It is a very clueless article.
This issue includes just one story, part 3 of "Search for the Gnome Cache," a serialized novel by Gary Gygax (under the by-name "Garrison Keller"). In this installment, the runaway Dunstan continues his pointless wanderings. Over the course of two chapters, he argues with an innkeeper and then tricks a stableboy into guiding him north. There is no pace in the plotting, and the writing is charmless.
"Birth Tables for D&D" by Brad Stock and Brian Lane allow players to roll up the social status of their D&D characters. Such tables became standard in later editions of the game. Neither Stock nor Lane published further in the RPG space.
A new regular column, "Out on a Limb," is dedicated to reader feedback. I don't plan to summarise the letters for these retrospectives, except when they are especially interesting.
The reduction in fiction meant that Kask needed more material for the magazine, and quality gaming articles were still scarce. To fill the column inches, he published what he titled "A Plethora of Obscure Sub-classes." He prefaced the collection with this statement:
The authors of D & D have asked me to stress that none of the following are to be considered 'official.' I feel that the purpose of THE DRAGON is to provide new ideas and variants and have printed in the past and will probably print in the future things that I wouldn't let in my own campaign; a great deal of them are superfluous and better handled by the DM. Be that as it may, I would like to urge caution and discretion in allowing the proliferation of weird sub-classes. All too often, they only make it harder for the DM, and are often too powerful to use as player characters.
This comment is hardly a ringing endorsement of the material! The subsequent pages detail the Healer by C. Hettlestad, the Scribe by David Mumper, the Samurai by Mike Childers, the Idiot by Gordon Davidson, and the Jester by Charles Carner, William Cannon & Pete Simon. None of these authors published any further in the RPG field.
Larry Smith brings us "A New View of Dwarves," listing a substantial collection of new dwarf powers based on his reading of Tolkien. It's a thoughtful article, and Smith later wrote for the Space Opera RPG.
And that's a wrap! It's a poor issue, with my favourite article being Smith's one on dwarves. Next issue, we are introduced to a new game, The Empire of the Petal Throne.
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 3 here.