My "Golden Age" of Dragon Magazine

Everyone has their “Golden Age” when it comes to Dragon magazine and in reality it's no different then say White Dwarf. A lot of one's views will be dependent on just where you entered gaming. As I've discussed on this blog and on sites like Dragonsfoot before, I was a late comer to 1^st Edition AD&D in the terms of its product run. I started gaming in 1982, but for years my friends and I really mixed and matched stuff together as we explored the game, in other words like a lot of kids I suspect we freely mixed and matched 1^st Edition and Basic and never thought twice about doing so.

So with that in mind I really didn't start reading Dragon on a consistent basis until well after many 1^st edition gamers would consider Dragon to be on the decline. To me this is puzzling because around #105 things started to get really good, again from my perspective.

The run from about issue #80 till around #170 fits my style of gaming perfectly: detailing out first edition stuff (albeit late 1^st) that I can easily insert into my 2^nd edition games with little or no fuss. To me there is little I have to change, it fits like a glove.

In a looser order here are probably my top ten all time favorite Dragon magazine issues:

1. #134- Dragons. This issue is the be-all, end-all when it comes to dragons and anything dragon related. It's a great reference for amping up 1^st edition dragons and good dragon tactics in general. The cover is pretty cool too, a bit weird now, but still cool.

2. #125- Chivalry. Back in the day I was a huge fan of cavaliers and played them a lot, not for any power-gaming reasons, but more for stomping foes into the dust in the name of king and country! Being the first book I bought with my own cash (aka Unearthed Arcana probably had something to do with it). In terms of iconic images there aren't many more then a knight on horseback, lance leveled. I think I wore out my copy back in the day reading, and rereading this thing. Even the other articles not dealing with knights are damn cool. As far as cover, look at that! A  historical based Arthur, how cool is that? Couple this issue with  #118 (see below), the Arthurian characters from the Deities and Demigods (Legends and Lore) from 1^st edition and you well on your way to an Arthurian themed campaign.

3. #127- Call to Arms. This is just as good as #125 in my book. There is so much meat in this you need a fork and knife. Single-class fighters are probably my second favorite class after fighter/mage. When you look at the options and idea starters this gives the DM and players you can couple this with #125 and #119 for everything one would need for a strong feudal style campaign akin to the Hundred Years War or a least a mythological one.
Again the cover on this is epic. I think I drew that cover multiple times as a early teen. There is so much going on. I especially love the one orc saying basically “Ok lets go at this one last time"!

4. #136- Urban Adventures. Damn this cover rocks too, see a pattern here? Urban adventures are a very under utilized part of the game in my opinion and often an area where newer players simply see as a “store” to exchange stuff for stuff they want from “shop-keepers”. What #136 does is give the DM a great host of options and the article “50 ways to foil your players" in a gem of an article in my opinion.
If that were not enough there is a great golem article, a very good Star Frontiers one and host of others. In short you can't go wrong with the options this issue gives you.

5. #138 Dreadful Tidings. This one gets special mention for two reasons: a wide selection of alternative undead types which I've used for years (Hungry Dead anyone?) and the article on the plague. The rest of it is a bit skimpy but the two articles more then make up for it.The cover isn't bad and has a good deal going on but for some reason it doesn't register with me.

6. #160- The City Never Sleeps. Tie this in with #136 and you've got everything you need for down and dirty city creation and defenses in a magical world. Thieves guild articles, and others fill out the special section nicely. I especially like the maps of the Inn of the Last Call.
For issue #160 the cover is ok, not my favorite, but ok. The real meat in this one is the articles.

7. #123- Arcane Arts. This cover sets the tone and is a great tool to use for the magically inclined characters of the campaign world. The special section has three outstanding articles and the Arcane Lore section with fire related spells is fantastic. Of special note is the idea of the "Arcane College", a great tool for DMs to use when PC mages get to higher levels. 
Legends and Lore has oriental heroes and the Marvel-Phile section has some of the heralds of Galactus.

 8. #118- Competitions and Tournaments. Tie into #125 and Arthurian Britain (legendary not quasi-historical) and away we go. Ever wonder about how to stage a tourney? Wonder no more, follow the pointers in this section and you're well on the way to a good framework for a fair, festival, what have you. Also consider the article “The Fairest of the Fairs” #137 in conjunction with this issue for further idea kick-starters.

Some folks will not like this issue as it contains the infamous article heralding the coming of second edition by Zeb Cook; who makes the cut in terms of classes and who doesn't... I'll leave it at that to cut down on the rancor.Personally I think Zeb did a great job and the grogs can go stuff it.

This cover is awesome and the last of the great chess series that ran for years by the artist Denis Beauvais.
9. #116- Maritime Adventures. Long before “Of Ships and the Sea” I used this issue to great effect as it covers everything needed for ships and sailing in a fantasy setting. As I got older I still liked the idea behind it, but I've never liked the the idea of SoL akin to HMS Victory in a world of high medieval tech. To me a cog or at most a caravel represents the levels of seaborne tech for most worlds. And for me a caravel would be on the hogh side of maritime technology.
The cover is what it is: a picture of a red dragon mini with some smoke effects added. Nice, but not great. 

The whole issue is great by my estimation and there really isn't a bad article in it. 
10. #106. This was tough as I'm tempted to pick the likes of #115, #145, #148, #167 or #178. I give the nod to #106 solely based on the strength of the article “A Plethora of Paladins” The illrigger alone is so cool you can't go wrong with it and the class has featured in my 2^nd games. In fact it was the illrigger that made me reevaluate kits and dump them pretty much from my 2^nd edition games entirely. I find most of the NPC classes work just fine in 2^nd and you can easily use them with the likes of “Sages and Specialists” which are more akin to NPC classes in presentation anyways.
 The cover... while not a "chain mail bikini" it's starting to get close...

Honorable mention/Runner up status goes to the likes of #99 (for the expanded sword system and troop tables) #102 (Anti-Ranger), #119 (Druids) and #124 (Airborne Adventuring). The cover of #119 is especially awesome! #126 is another favorite of mine especially for the cover.

These issues for me were the “sweet spot” of gaming articles an heavily influenced my gaming and my perception of the game. It probably also explains why to some degree 2^nd edition became such a non-issue to me; my group and I were already mix and matching for years the various gaming systems. When 2^nd came out we continued to do so. ­

Tomorrow is gone, time to start really funding NASA

Truer words were never spoke and Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks them perfectly.

The next time you hear someone ask "why are we spending so much money on X rather then problems on Earth". Slap them upside the head.  The Us government spent more on TARP then the entire 50 year budget of NASA. The US government spends more  each year on Health Human Services & and social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid then the entire US defense budget! In short NASA's funding is ridiculously low.

Time to start dreaming again America, time to reach for the stars again. Thanks Neil deGrasse Tyson for pointing that out to us, perhaps someday soon we'll start reaching for them again.

Dave Arneson = Jef Raskin?

Who and who I hear you ask?

Bare with me before I get to the meat, most people know who Gary Gygax is in the gaming world, but not all might know Dave Arneson. In computers most people know who Steve Jobs was, but probably never heard of Jef Raskin.

Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D

For those wondering and wanting more information on the team that ushered us into the dawn of the personal computing world look here for an excellent site run by Andy Hertzfeld. Andy was  one of the eight Macintosh creators; here are links to some of them from 1983/84 ( Mac creators outakes), you can also find the famous photo of the 8 here.  For more details on the birth of the Macintosh computer please visit here Folklore.org

Jef Raskin had the original idea for the Macintosh, but Steve took the project over and went in an entirely different direction. Sound familiar?As lore would hold it in D&D Dave showed Gary hsi early work and Gary expounded from there. The problem lies in the fact that we will never known how much was Gary's details and how much was Dave's. My gut tells me that it was probably a little bit of both, culled from different sources.

Jef Raskin holding a Canon Cat

I post this with one simple thought: are these two individuals similar in their places in history? In the case of Jef, his side of the story is well known and can be found on the web. In the case of Dave, a sealed lawsuit prevents us from ever knowing one of the crown jewels of the early drama filled days of D&D. Just what balance of ideas led to D&D, and whose at that?

Gary pulled and borrowed from a lot of different sources. I don't fault him for that, as I think that is is his genius. He was able to use a wide amalgamation of varying  material to forge it into a product that was better then the sum of its parts.

In Jef's case he was truly one of the early pioneers in the personal computer realm (although just how much is difficult to tell. Such luminaries as Bruce Horn certainly have different ideas on Jef's contributions. Jef's Mac project is hard to reconsile with what Steve turned out, to whit when free to persue his own muse Jef turned out the Canon Cat. Quite different then the original 128k Mac.

Food for thought and one I'll leave the readers to ponder here, please do a bit of reading on the two men. I'd love to hear whether I'm way off or closer then even I'm thinking.

Of Faramir, Captain of Gondor

So as a family, we’ve sat down and have been watching the Lord of the Rings movies and the kids have enjoyed them. My son being younger has been fidgeting around a bit, but my daughter has watched all the way through. Last night we finished the Two Towers. As a quick aside she likes as I do both Samwise and R2D2, there are a lot of parallels there and maybe I’ll cover that down the road, but back on topic.

 

As we watched the Two Towers last night I took another look at Faramir and how much Peter Jackson bungled the character or at least the context of the character as written by the good professor. The Professor is on record as saying that of all the characters, Faramir is him or a personification of that which Tolkien identified with. Before I get into this I will state that I enjoyed the movies immensely and the changes that they made for the most part made sense (example the Elves at Helm’s Deep). Most of the changes work better in the constraints of the movies. I’m not that rabid, and no all you fatbeards, Tom Bombadil still sucks and he's entirely unnecessary, certainly for the movies. I’m not that unreasonable, but with the case of Farmir it looks like even Jackson realized he erred in the movie depiction of Faramir and tries to “correct” some of it in the extended version of the Two Towers.

Peter Jackson missed the whole point of Farmir and the two sons: Boromir and Farmir. Easy to say and I don’t think there will be much disagreement here. For those not in the know, a quick recap as these three characters all revolve around each other beyond the familial ties.

• Denethor, (played by John Noble) the last Steward of Gondor. The steward is just that, not a king, but the caretaker of the throne. Flawed, slightly unhinged and certainly no better for using the palantir Denethor has blind spots concerning his two sons.  Certainly can see no fault in his eldest son and no use for his second.
• Boromir, (played by Sean Bean) eldest son of Denethor. Especially well portrayed in the movies by Sean Bean.  Tries to claim the ring from Frodo in the Fellowship of the Ring but dies protecting Merry and Pip. In the end he realizes his error, but in his own way has some of the flaws of his father. I don’t see this as a fault. He is not weak  in his willpower per say, its just he is no Faramir!
• Faramir is younger son of Denethor and well portrayed in the movies by David Wenham, Faramir is likeable, eager to please, focused, well meaning and above all just and even tempered and certainly a martial character in the books, but as written by Jackson, totaling missing the mark.

To what am I referring in a round about way? In the extended DVD version of the Two Towers where we meet Faramir and we see how badly Jackson failed to understand this seemingly minor character as Tolkien wrote him. Faramir is depicted as succumbing to the power of the One Ring and willing to hand it over to his father. Problem is that Farmair was the one character that Tolkien wrote that the One Ring had no sway over, think about that statement for a minute. Of the entire myriad of characters that appear in the books, it is Farmair and Faramir alone that is immune to it (Bombadil doesnt count as he's so nonsensical). In the books even Sam considers the possibilities for the brief time he is a ring bearer, but not Faramir. With the extended version of the movies it gets worse in my opinion as  Jackson basically admits to two things with Faramir, one the that the movie needed something else with the shift of some of the scenes from Two Towers to Return of the King. So some of it what dictated by the needs of the movie. Ok, so on that level I understand what he did. Two, he is on record (paraphrasing here) that “having someone immune to the power of the ring lessens its effect”. (Double blink, double face palm.) Well Peter, maybe you missed the whole point entirely and even missed it with the changes in your versions of the story. In fact if you took a step back you would have seen it plain as day.

Rather then have Faramir trying to prove himself in the movies “a chance for Faramir, captain of Gondor to prove his quality” you should have considered who and what Faramir was/is. Rather then having Farmir trying to be just like his older brother and win his father’s love it’s as simple as comparing the three and how Denethor treats his sons. Consider that the “prized” eldest son fails and is tempted by the ring, thereby not justifying the faith his father places in him. This makes it an easy contrast to see then when his second son who he has no use for (“Do not speak to be of Faramir, I know his uses and they are few”), is actually, at least in these terms, superior to his brother whom Denethor prizes so highly.

Instead of rushing to make Farmir the kid brother who desperately wants to prove himself to his father it would have been better to use Faramir directly out of the books. It was such a simple contrast and one so powerful that I don’t know how he could have missed it. I think he fails to give the movie goer credit here.

I can’t state it any better. Jackson created a wonderful set of movies and I have no doubt about his zeal. But on this one thing he whiffed and whiffed badly. He and his wife/writing partner  Fran (who took an excessive glee in my opinion) in mangling some key parts of the story missed the point of Faramir entirely. 

 

Perhaps even more so then Frodo, Faramir has a Galahad quality to him. Farmir was designed to be immune to the ring, but for a reason that Jackson missed entirely. Farmir succeeding where Boromir failed highlights the differences between he two and the flaws in Denethor’s powers of observation. Jackson could havs used this masterfully but didn’t: Denethor grossly underestimates Faramir and as a result highlights his own failings all the more and also by contrast those failings of Boromir. If there is any doubt consider this:

Page. 280, The Two Towers, The Window on the West- "But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo." 

One would think that this is hardly open to interpretation there Peter.

The changes to Farmir change his character greatly and cheapen him in my honest opinion. In essence he is dumbed down simply to keep things consistent in the movies. Most moviegoers will never know of this, but for those that have ever read the books it leaps of the screen as an example of missing the mark as far as small part of the story of Lord of the Rings. No wonder some have dubbed him "Filmamir".

For more about Farmir and some details on Jackson's thought on why he changed Farmir in the movies: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Faramir  or here: http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Faramir

What the Hell is people's problems with THAC0?

First off a bit of history that currently adorns my signature on Dragonsfoot:

F is Frank, as in Frank Mentzer, longtime cohort of Gary Gygax and one of the few active folks from the advent of TSR and the role-playing age on DF. There are people who think of THAC0 as 2nd Edition AD&D creation when in fact according to Frank it predates 1st Edition and may even have been in common parlance around the time of the Lake Geneva Campaign. And again for those that don't know the Lake Geneva Campaign was the grand-daddy of them all in terms of RPGs; it was the one that Gary DM'ed and well, pretty much wrote AD&D as well know it.

Now on to THAC0 itself: THAC0 stands for "To Hit Armor Class (Zero)." In 2nd edition AD&D in melee combat, one rolls a d20 and compares it against their THAC0 score. For example if your THAC0 score is a 18 and you roll a 14 you would hit Armor Class 4. In other words, straight up on the die with no modifiers THAC0 represents the roll you need hit AC 0 on a d20. In a nutshell that's all there is to it. So why is it that people look like this when you bring up the subject of THAC0 in gaming circles?



Seriously simple math is that hard folks? The only argument that I can see possibly being made is for a unified mechanical rule of later editions which THAC0 is not. But, then again 1st and 2nd Edition has lots of wonky bits to it anyways. 3rd edition and later did tiddy up stuff, but abandoned this one when it wasn't broken.Plus I'm not a fan of a single mechanic simply for its own sake.


So the next time so f-tard starts squawking about the difficulty of simple math and unified mechanics being superior just point out the can do math. For the older grognard crowd point out that THAC0 appears in their "Ye Olde Holy Book" aka the 1st edition Dungeon Master's Guide written by Gary. But be prepared to save vs, long winded diatribe regarding about how Gary didn't like it.

Dudes... STFU it's in the freaking book, your book no less.

WM